Falling
by Laryna6
Summary: Trying to prevent Luke from lowering the outer lands, Van accidently provides Lorelei with a body. But whose side is the sentience on, when the Score decrees Auldrant's death and the Grand Fonic Hymn compels him to aid Yulia's heirs?
1. To Their Deaths

_Van's head is a scary place._

_Consider Hod. Yes, Van is not sane. It is not possible to get out of something like that alive without a few screws being loosened to void the pressure at minimum. Not to mention that in the society we see in Hod's traditions suicide would have very likely been the right thing to do, either in the Asian tradition of self-execution or the European tradition of going on a Crusade or some such thing and getting oneself killed in a noble cause (what Van is doing). Combat training always contains some form of moral instruction, so Van is probably where Luke and Asch got their own suicidal tendencies when it comes to atonement._

_Lorelei in-game gets way too little screen time, but there are some key things. One is that his voice sounds quite old and weary, the tendency to use old-style language reinforcing that. Another is that while he asks Luke and Asch to rescue him from Van he still goes to heal Van even though he knows what Van will do, and he sounds… struggling, yet hopelessly, in that conversation. There's also the final conversation with Luke, in which we find out that Lorelei really didn't believe that overturning the Score without Eldrant was possible._

_And, of course, Lorelei is responsible for the Score, which has led to so many unhappy memories and Lorelei is a being composed of memory, among other aspects. If he hasn't spent the past two thousand years guilt-tripping like crazy… There's also that Van was able to 'suppress' Lorelei without singing the hymn that time, and given their power differentials?_

_The most powerful being in the gameverse, and he's playing the role of helpless victim, essentially. This fic explores some of that._

_Disclaimer: I don't own Tales of the Abyss, Namco-Bandai and other rightful owners do. No infringement intended or money made._

_Edit: Oh, for crying out loud… I looked over the rest of the fic, but somehow the horrible prose in the first scene in this chapter escaped me. That's how my writing gets when my condition acts up and my brain does not have enough oxygen. Ugh, that was terrible! I fixed the worst of it._

* * *

To think he would die here, and at the hands of the replica! Van staggered backwards, entranced by the irony. Deviations were as nothing before the Score, he knew that, but there had been no mention of this! No, surely the other god-generals would be able to complete Eldrant without him, they had to or the Score would survive and humanity would die. In the end, this wouldn't change anything.

If he died here he would no longer have to bear that guilt. Yet, to die without having accomplished his purpose! He couldn't bear that.

The replica was so much like him at this age, hopelessly naïve and wanting to believe that it was possible to save lives. Luke clung to life hopelessly in defiance of the score. He even wanted Van to live. Luke was leaning forward, wanting to take that final step to reach out and pull him back from the abyss… That was it. That was one final blow he could strike against the Score's addicts, against this corrupt and dying world. With Luke gone Asch might still be swayed to his side, help destroy the Score in his memory, or at least raise Eldrant so that_ some_ would survive, because without the replica they wouldn't be able to lower the lands safely.

With what remained of his strength Van steadied his footing and lunged forward, just far enough to grab the foolish replica's wrist. Then, laughing, he threw himself down into the core.

"Luke!" Mystearica and Gailardia ran to the edge, reaching for Luke as Luke had come too close to reaching for Van, but it was too late. Luke reflexively tried to strike, but Van knocked the boy's sword away, sending it flying and leaving both of them unarmed. They could do nothing but look over the edge as their friend and their enemy fell away.

"Damn him!" The necromancer had realized why Van had done that, but it was too late for him to do anything either.

"Guy, Tear!" Luke called, but there was nothing anyone could do.

Soon they were out of sight, and Luke's hand fell back to his side, clenched into a fist. "Master Van, why?" He didn't look at his (former) teacher or try to strike a blow, eyes closed and shoulders hunched in misery, determinedly not crying.

"Because the Score must be destroyed, even if the cost is all of Auldrant, as the Score itself tells us." The fight seemed to have gone out of Luke. After all, they were both falling to inevitable doom, adrift in the core's fonons until they died. Luke had never wanted to fight him. Van doubted the replica had enough control to use his hyperresonance to get them both out of here, and if he did then he would take Van with him: there was no point in trying to speed up their deaths.

They were both doomed, and Luke was trying so hard not to cry. "You wanted to save them," Van knew. "Luke, do not blame yourself. The Score made their deaths inevitable. You could not have prevented Akzeriuth, and you could not have prevented Auldrant sinking into the miasma."

His shoulders untensed a little, the pain lessening a bit. Van had raised Mystearica, and this one as well. He'd created Luke, and Luke had accomplished his purpose in destroying Akzeriuth, at least. If they were both doomed, then the least he could do was comfort a dying child. There was no point in being angry with the replica. Van tugged the arm he held until Luke's shoulder was in range and managed to pull Luke against his chest.

"Master Van?" Luke asked quietly, hesitantly.

"I hadn't expected you to defeat me. You exceeded my expectations."

Luke pressed his face against Van's robes, hiding it. His shoulders shook a little, losing the battle to hold back his tears. "I'm sorry…" What did he think he was apologizing for?

"Don't apologize for winning a battle, Luke. We both fought for what we believe in. It… it took resolve for you to fight me. Do not lose it now." He stroked the replica's hair as he had Mystearica's when she missed their mother.

"I didn't want to fight you, I didn't, but I couldn't let you…" The tears were flowing now, although the sobbing was barely audible. Luke had always had a high pain tolerance even before they'd begun training. He'd said that it hurt less than his headaches did when Van had broken one of the boy's fingers disarming him. It hadn't entirely been an accident, but he'd been shamed into not taking out the anger he had at the fon Fabre family on the child. He'd had to pretend approval to win Asch's loyalty and then regain it after the kidnapping.

It had worked: Asch had stayed with him until he'd found out about Eldrant. Van had used Luke's nature to manipulate Asch for too long: he should have known better than to think that Asch could accept the idea of replacing everyone with a replica.

How long would they drift here? Sync was still alive, if barely, and it had been some time. The seventh fonons here (in Lorelei's cage) would keep the two of them alive indefinitely. Perhaps he could train Luke in how to use his hyperresonance and use that to escape this place. Or… Once the world sunk surely the god-generals could finish his work. He pet Luke's hair soothingly and debated snapping his neck to put the child out of his misery quickly and painlessly. Weak as he was Luke could kill him far more easily. It was such an effort to stay awake, he'd run himself ragged getting to this point and then he'd lost the fight. Van had waited here for Asch, planning to use him to adjust the planet storm and speed up the fall of Auldrant, but instead it had been the replica and his followers. Where was Asch, he wondered.

Well, at least he could put Luke to sleep as he had Mystearica. "Shush, Luke. The battle is over, there is no reason for us to have to fight anymore." If they did get out of here, then perhaps he would have Luke's loyalty when it was over. If Asch couldn't be salvaged, his replacement would just have to do. He began to sing the first fonic hymn.

Then he smiled, realizing something. The Grand Fonic Hymn! Symbol of Yulia's pact with Lorelei. Lorelei was supposed to answer it and aid Yulia's descendants, if they could sing it correctly. Their mother hadn't been willing to, her death had been Scored.

Luke quieted before the second verse was finished, choking breaths evening off into peaceful slumber as fonons gathered around them.

It wasn't until he finished the fifth that Van realized that Luke was starting to glow, the fonons entering his body. At the end of the sixth wings burst from Luke's back, six of them. When the hymn itself was complete red-gold eyes opened and looked up at Van. Of course: a perfect isofon of Lorelei must make a perfect host.

Wordlessly, Luke's tentative grip turned into a sure hold as Lorelei spread those wings and flew upwards against the current of the planet storm. Then it paused.

**Hey, replica! Why haven't you started yet!**

…_what… Asch? _

**Of course it's me! What the hell are you doing! Get to work, you dreck, I can't do all of this myself and it's your job! **

_Master Van… _Oh, yes, Luke had to lower the lands. That was urgent, _There…_

**What the? **Asch stared as the commands Van had given and the brute-force overrides Luke had engraved were swept away and the system began to function normally, registering and obeying commands appearing seemingly from nowhere. **That's not…**Not the commands the replica's group had given the sephiroth but it looked like they would actually work better. **How did you do that?** How could the replica work the sephiroth better than Van, even?

…_that's how you do it. _That was how the trees were supposed to work. _Thank you for… reminding me. _Oh. _Master Van pulled me down into the core after we defeated him. He sang hymns and now I feel strange. Please, tell the others! I'm, I'm slipping again. _The gold he'd woken up from was subsuming everything again. It was warm, and pretty, and right. He wanted to help Master Van, it was his duty as his student to, and also as…_Here!_ He threw something to Asch, knowing that for some reason he had to.

**Replica? Replica!**

There was no answer except a warp to the Absorption Gate appearing on his right.

"Luke?" The gold had drained away there for a few seconds, as though Luke was waking up from a dream and regaining control of his body back from Lorelei. When he heard Van's voice the gold returned, but instead of the entire eye being solid gold there were now whites and pupils.

"Yes?" The tone was dreamlike, more sung than spoken.

"Are you Luke, or Lorelei?"

"I am both, and I am neither."

"Explain."

"Long ago, the seventh fonon was discovered and a war began over who would control it. That war was won by your ancestress, Yulia Jue. She created a history, a memory of the planet's past and future, born of her hopes and fears. That is Lorelei, Memory of Auldrant. Eight years ago, as Yulia bade you, you set out to create a new scion of the seventh fonon, a blank slate upon which new memories could be written and new paths chosen, a future that could not be foretold. That is Luke, Hope of Eldrant." As Van digested this, the creature continued. "Both are manifestations of the sentience of the seventh fonon, but both have been shaped into very different people."

"And you are?"

"Currently, both exist. Your hymn drew the bound spirit Lorelei into the vessel of the free spirit Luke. Lorelei must obey your commands, bound by the Score. Luke has free will. As Luke wishes for your happiness, your Hymn and intent were able to lull him into sleep. Lorelei must obey your commands as Yulia bound him, but Luke must follow his heart as you created him. I am the… compromise between them."

"Will you help me bring about Eldrant?"

"Lorelei must assist you. Luke cannot let you bear the burden of any more deaths. Choose the things you ask of me wisely, Vandesdelca. Only the fact that Luke wishes to be at your right hand, to help you as much as he can lets Lorelei keep him asleep. Order him to do something he will not, and he will not follow that order any more than Eldrant would follow the Score."

"Luke truly has free will?"

"That was what you intended, was it not? Of course a replica world composed of the seventh fonon must contain a sentience of the fonon. Of course a isofon of the pure seventh fonon itself, a scion of Lorelei, would be such a sentience. Or did you simply do as Yulia foretold without asking why?"

"I had a reason, but it was a different reason." Distance was hard to tell here, but it looked like they weren't moving. "Can you use hyperresonance to bring me to the Island of Feres?"

"In a moment," Lorelei answered. "It is not safe right now. We must stay here until the land has finished lowering."

"What? They lowered the land without Luke?" Damn! "Asch must have succeeded."

"Asch was not the one to lower it. He used hyperresonance to ask Luke why he was not doing his duty, and awoke him long enough that Luke was able to access Lorelei's knowledge of the sephiroth to accomplish that task before he was lulled back into sleep."

Short red hair framing golden eyes, wings coming out the sides of a torn coat so that Luke's coattails almost looked like a fourth pair: both Luke and not. Van needed to remember that.

"Luke would rather the hope of Eldrant's creation die, and him with it, than see your hands stained with any more blood," Lorelei warned him again. "If he is awakened he will fight you again."

"If Eldrant becomes impossible Luke will die?" That might provide leverage.

"Luke is the avatar of the infinite possibilities of Eldrant. If Eldrant becomes impossible and they no longer exist then Luke's existence will also become impossible. He is the future, Vandesdelca, not a relic of the past, unlike Lorelei."

"If Luke dies will Eldrant fail?"

"Luke will not die unless Eldrant fails." That was some comfort. "No matter how dire the situation there will always be hope for survival, and he is that hope." A warning, now. "But you wished Eldrant to be free of the sins of the past, a world where there would never be another Hod, another Akzeriuth. Be careful, Vandesdelca, not to stain the innocence you wish for more than you already have. At least he will always have the power to destroy his old self and break free of his past… but he might not always wish to."

"What does that mean?"

"You are his father, Vandesdelca. You are a part of his past he may not wish to break free of. That is both to your advantage and not." Lorelei's eyes closed. "But speaking of you interests him, and he might wake to see if you are alright. The island of Feres, is that what you desire? The land is lowered now."

"Yes, right away."


	2. Ashes, ashes, we all

_The way the communications and links between Luke, Lorelei, and Asch plays out in the game is interesting. We have descriptions of how Luke's link to Asch and Lorelei feels from his perspective, Asch described how it felt when Lorelei tried to contact him and it's clear that talking to Luke isn't painful for him, but I wanted to consider Lorelei's experiences of those links, in particular Asch's. Asch described his mind sort of getting overwhelmed/subsumed, so it seemed like an interesting idea to have contact with Asch, while it's happening, affect Lorelei's personality a bit, in the sense that Asch is (partially) part of him. _

* * *

"Anise, herd Guy this way!" Jade grabbed Tear and Natalia by the backs of their clothes and started to drag them towards the warp.

"Guy, if you don't come with us I'll drag you too!"

"Gah!" Guy looked at Anise, the abyss, and back, wanting to stay despite the threat but there was nothing he could do.

"Jade…" Tear protested, or started to protest, voice trailing off.

"There is nothing we can do! We have to get to the Albiore, we can't lower the land without Luke and we have to do what we can!" Although what could they do, who could they save with only a single airship?

Someone appeared in the warp they were heading towards. "Natalia!"

"Asch! What are you doing here?"

Clearly a large part of why he was here was making sure that Natalia was okay, but it looked like the person Asch had come to see, or yell at, wasn't present. "What happened to the replica? He was babbling something about Van."

"You have been able to get in contact with him?" Jade asked. He wasn't the only one to start talking.

"Oh, Asch, it was horrible! We defeated Van and then he grabbed Luke and flung them both into the core! Please tell me that Luke is alive, please!" Natalia wanted to cling to him, but this wasn't the same Luke she had known when they were both little children, and they weren't little children anymore.

The one that grabbed him was Guy. "Hey, Tear, you and Luke were able to teleport with hyperresonance, right? Do you think you could use this guy to go find him?"

"Let go of me!" A sword appeared in Asch's hand, although since Guy had his arms pinned down Asch couldn't hit him with it. Asch stared at the sword and they all stopped, wondering what it was and why it grabbed his attention. "The Key of Lorelei… How did that dreck get the Key of Lorelei?"

"Wouldn't we all like to know." Jade knew he would.

"He said 'Here!' and I felt something, but it must have absorbed into my fonons." Asch focused and the sword vanished, reappearing an instant later.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you. The contamination effect can cause insanity. Oh, yes, you're Asch. Never mind then." That, Jade thought to himself, was weak. However, everyone else was close to flying off the handle and therefore comic relief was required. "Is Luke still alive? Is Commandant Grants?"

"I don't know." Asch frowned, disturbed. "I don't know. It's like staring at the sun." He stared at the sword. "Lorelei is in the core, so… Perhaps that dreck got himself absorbed."

"Don't call him that!" Tear protested.

"Why not?"

Guy released Asch by spinning him around, Guy's fist catching his nose when it came into range. Luckily Guy had some restraint left: breaking the nose the correct way could send bone up into the brain and kill instantly. It was almost certain that Guy knew that. As it was, there was just blood and Jade caught Natalia's hands to keep her from healing it while Guy caught Asch by the collar. "Replica or not, Luke is my friend, which is more than I can say for some people! Sure, you and Natalia were friends as children, but you never forgot that I was your servant, did you? And what kind of man lets his girlfriend go find corners to cry in because her love had something happen to him so horrible that he turned into a baby who doesn't remember her while he's really fine and dandy, huh? You, you _disgust _me." Guy let him fall to the ground and stalked away.

When he got to his knees Asch looked at Natalia. "You…" You cried?

Natalia looked away.

"We all thought he was you inside, and all we had to do was get you to come out of that shell, wake the hell up and stop hiding from what happened to you. We told Luke we didn't want him, we wanted _you _all of his life." This time, Guy punched an archway and stood there, not looking at any of them. "He's not dead and we're getting him back."

No one was inclined to argue. This was Guy?

Jade, for one, agreed that Luke was most likely alive and that it would be foolish to leave him in Van's hands after what happened the last time. He also knew Gailardia's history better than anyone here. He wasn't going to get between the orphan and the only living person he regarded as family.

* * *

"Get down here!"

"I am bound to come to the assistance of Yulia's descendants, not play punching bag for fon masters." Lorelei hovered in the middle of the vast entrance hall of their Feres base, out of Sync's range no matter what he tried. "If you want to beat up someone up for what happened to you, could I suggest Mohs?"

"Fon Master?" Arietta asked.

"As the oldest surviving replica of Ion, Sync is the rightful fon master, not the current Ion."

"Current Ion?" Arietta asked.

"Be quiet!" Sync was in on the don't-let-Arietta-know-the-real-Ion's-dead conspiracy, supposedly on pain of pain (via Largo, who had also semi-adopted her), but also because he felt sorry for her and it was nice to know that at least one Ion had been wanted for himself.

"Come up here and make me." Lorelei put his forehead in his hand. "Ugh…" His wings rustled as Sync tried to take him up on that challenge. "My apologies, Sync. Vandesdelca, Asch is attempting to contact Luke. As he is an isofon even if he isn't a scion, he is…disruptive."

"Can you lure him here?"

"I could give him hints, yes. But other than that… Contact with him, the current Ion, Gailardia, Mystearica, Natalia, Suzanne, Jade, or Anise to a lesser degree should be avoided. Luke has feelings for them and could awaken unexpectedly. Others, including Asch's father, are safe." Lorelei had lost Luke's shoes at some point and generally let his legs dangle. He seemed to have an intense dislike of small spaces and never let himself touch the ground, walls, or ceiling if it could be avoided.

"Exactly how much do you control?" Legretta's eyes were narrow, and her guns had the necessary range, like Arietta's flying monsters.

"Control? Nothing. Contain the accurate memory of? Everything Luke doesn't alter." Lorelei's wings folded in a bit as he answered.

"You're unhappy?" Arietta could read monster body language very well. Fonon sentiences weren't monsters, but they weren't human either. Humans didn't have wings, for one thing.

"Luke was dreadfully unhappy his entire life. The previous scion was born to stop a war and the best he could do was let Yulia use him for this." The wings flared at the word 'this,' indicating the world around them. "What do I have to be happy about?" He shrugged. "Well, at least I'm out of the core and it will be over soon."

"Alright." Vandesdelca checked everything over one last time and then closed the hatch. "It's ready for the replica data of the population of Yulia City."

Lorelei nodded, cupping his hands and igniting a golden orb above them. Fonons started to stream into the room, wrapping around Lorelei and draining into the orb.

So much more convenient than sending Sync to pose as a false scorer. Not that Yulia City would let them get away with that ruse. Soon, the inhabitants of that city would start dying in droves, and with them what little knowledge of the Dawn Age remained that might be used to stop Van's plans.

The orb, complete, was gently tossed at the fon machine that took up most of the room.

"Is Luke awakening?"

"He doesn't truly understand replication and he doesn't personally know anyone there. He's deep asleep: only certain triggers would awaken him. If you were to have me destroy the city with hyperresonance, that would wake him. Causing it to die with a whimper instead of a bang won't." Yet even so, Lorelei's wings started to curl up around him until a ball of feathers hung there. "He doesn't know that what I'm doing is fatal. There are some other cities that contain individuals he has connected with. Sheridan, home of the Albiore, Jade's sister Nephry, Emperor Peony, Gailardia's aunt, General Frings, Dr. Shu and Spinoza of Belkend: you would have to secure them yourselves. If I were to touch their memories he would wake up to say hello."

"Say hello?" Sync folded his arms.

"He is dreaming, not awake and has no idea what we are up to. Only that it is of assistance to his beloved teacher and won't harm anyone. Or so he thinks, on the second part. He is quite naïve." Lorelei seemed jealous. Or sounded, at least, since nothing of him could be seen but the wings. "Guardian of memory, that was what she named me and here I am stealing body-memories and condemning thousands to death…" The wings shivered. "Those he has connected with-I doubt they would approve of your goals, but all of them wish for new futures, futures unbound by the Score. They yearn for Eldrant in their hearts, and that is why they are open to him."

* * *

"We are the third city so far, all this month." And it was Belkend, city of fon machines. The lab building had been given over to cots, just like Yulia City's central facility. "The death toll is higher and faster here than in Yulia City, but a little slower than in Chesedonia. I believe it has to do with the percentage of seventh fonists and potential seventh fonists instead of the process becoming more or less deadly."

"The symptoms are matching those of replica data extraction?" Dr. Jade Balfour wanted a second opinion?

Dr. Shu gave him the answer they both knew was coming. "Yes. As though everyone in the city had their replica data extracted all at once. There are a few exceptions, like myself here and Astor in Chesedonia, but there's no rhyme or reason to that either. I might be more or less running things here, since… but Mayor Teodoro was affected." Meaning that, as counter-intuitive as the idea that leaders were being spared might be, a deliberate decision to spare them weren't the reason Shu and Astor were escaping.

"Mayor Teodoro is still alive, if barely," Jade corrected him.

"Yulia City, Chesedonia, Belkend…" Guy murmured. "Taking out the people who know the most about the Dawn Age, cutting the Malkuth-Kimlasca supply line, eliminating the people who know the most about replicas… Does anyone think Daath is next? Although we all thought they would be second." Even though they'd hoped that something had just gone wrong when Yulia City was taken out of the miasma and there wouldn't be a second. He hoped it wouldn't be Sheridan.

"I haven't been able to evacuate Daath." Ion sighed. "Grand Maestro Mohs says the Score predicts no disasters for Daath, and we have refugees flooding in…"

"Don't blame yourself, Ion. It's not your fault Mohs is an idiot." Anise patted him on the shoulder. Mohs was keeping her parents in the city as incentive to get this deviation from the score fixed as soon as possible.

"Damn it! If only we knew where Van was hiding!" Asch stabbed the wall, causing sparks to fly and several present to wince. Asch was getting more and more irrational by the day. Now that he couldn't spy on them through Luke he had to travel with them, and being around Guy and Natalia, reminders of the past he had thrown away, was wearing on him. It seemed like everything he said made Natalia flinch, and Guy's own live-and-let-live façade was also cracking under the pressure. Playing servant in the home of the man who murdered your family required both inhuman endurance of irritants and very good acting skills. "If only that damn replica would wake the hell up!" Flickers, drowned in the light. "How often is Van casting that hymn anyway?"

"Hymn?" Jade looked up from a sheaf of test results.

"I just remembered. He said something about Van using some hymns and then feeling weird."

"The Grand Fonic Hymn?" Tear gasped.

"Grand Fonic Hymn?" Something else he should have been informed of? Well, at least he was finding out now, and after the Akzeriuth debacle Jade had no right to complain about others holding back vital information. Turnabout was fair play.

"It's all of Yulia's fonic hymns sung together. It's the symbol of her pact with Lorelei and singing it is supposed to bring Lorelei to your aid, if it can come. And Van was in the core, where Yulia put Lorelei!" Tear realized.

"So Van summoned Lorelei, and since Luke is Lorelei's isofon…"

Tear interrupted Jade's thoughts. "Lorelei was sealed in the Key of Lorelei! What, what if… would it work like that?"

He was reading Tear's thoughts now? "The Key is pure seventh fonon with Lorelei's fonon frequency, just like Luke. If Van used the hymn, it's possible that Lorelei moved from the Key into Luke's body, and Luke's connection to Asch caused the Key to be sent to him somehow."

"No, he chose to send the Key to me, although I don't think he knew why it was important. Instinct or something."

"If Van is indeed using Lorelei's power to accomplish this, it would explain how he can get replica data, if that is _all_ that the fonons that leave the victims are, without any method that we can identify." How were they supposed to counter Lorelei's control over the seventh fonon? They might as well fight Efreet with fire!

"So Lorelei's under Van's control and using that replica's body to kill all of these people?" What a weakling, he would have said, if it weren't for Guy's glare and the sudden urge he felt to throw up.


	3. Apart

"Ah!" Lorelei had been helping stabilize the newly-created replicas, drastically speeding up the timetable, when it let out a cry of surprise, wings flaring open, and buried his head in his hands. "Asch, Asch realized what I was doing and thought it was Luke's fault, that made him realize what I was doing! It hurts… I can't keep him from…" Lorelei headed for Van. They'd talked about it in advance: if Luke woke up, Van was the only one who might be able to make him think that everything was alright.

So Van ended up catching a falling bundle of feathers and outwardly-17-but-inwardly-7-year-old boy. The feathers were the softest things he had ever felt, although that was incidental to the fact that the future of Eldrant was unhappy.

An innocent. Luke, despite all that Van had done to him, despite the fact that the boy had accepted that sometimes it was necessary to kill, was still an innocent. A pure-hearted child.

Luke was still pure, and kind, and would remain that way. Eldrant would remain untainted.

But every child came into the world reluctantly, screaming and covered in blood.

"Luke, Luke, listen to me." The Hymn worked on Lorelei, nothing bound Luke except the memories they shared, except Van's words and heart.

"Why… It's not fair. All those people, all those people." Luke shivered. "Please, stop this! I'll fight you again, I will, I can't let you do this!"

"But Luke, you already have." Seeing the shock and horror in those eyes, Van stroked that flame-bright hair. Luke needed comfort, and Van was the only one who had ever given it to him. "Luke, it is written in the Score that the world will end. Isn't it better this way, quick and painless, instead of by the miasma or a plague? Isn't it better that everyone's replicas live on in the new world instead of everything being lost? Auldrant will end, Luke. You know that. If Eldrant doesn't rise, if you don't live, then all of Auldrant's existence, all of this planet's memory will have been for nothing."

"Why doesn't matter! They're still people!"

Van remembered saying the same thing. Asking why his parents, why his friends had been expendable. Hod, Akzeriuth. Eternal prosperity didn't matter if they wouldn't be there to enjoy it. "Your own life is at stake here, Luke, and you would still argue against Eldrant. A future paradise isn't important to you, not next to those who are alive here and now." To the score, the future was just as valid as the now, lives paid for lives to pay for lives… "It's because you believe that, Luke, that I know this is the right thing to do. The replicas that are born here won't have an uncaring Score that treats them like cattle. You will see each and every one of them as people. Look, Luke." He turned him around to see the replicas of those who had died at Sheridan, kept here partially in hopes they had an aptitude for fontech but also in case of this. "You'll look after them, won't you? In the memory of their originals but for their own sakes."

"Iemon…" Van felt Luke grow lighter. It was strange to release him and see him float instead of run, Lorelei's nature clearly the same as his. A godling. "Hello, what's your name?"

"I-709." They had all been given designations, they could choose names later. They were not told who their originals had been so they could choose their own destinies. The gift of that choice… Van envied them.

"It's nice to meet you." Luke smiled, a bit sad, and the replica smiled back, at first hesitantly and then for real. Van and Dist hadn't known how or bothered to program them with how to show emotion. Somehow it was clear that Luke was teaching them the lessons it had taken him so long to learn and hadn't yet finished. Still as clear and direct as a child. After a few more moments Luke turned back to Van, rising higher off the floor and flaring out his wings into a pattern that seemed strangely familiar. "I can't let you kill the originals to make replicas. You don't know how it felt when I realized that I'd stolen Asch's life. I don't want them to have to live with doing it literally." The last word was accompanied with a flap of those wings that set a glyph spreading out across the floor. "Guy, Natalia, Tear, Jade, Anise, Ion…" Six key points, one for each wing. "Asch," Luke finished, another point of light appearing in front of him. "Here I am!"And now they were also here.

The others fell a foot to the ground, surprised but handling the landing easily. Asch remained floating. "Ah…" His hands held his head. "What are you doing, replica? It hurts!" Half-snarl, half-whimper, and altogether unintimidating.

"Luke? Is that you?" Natalia stepped around the floating figure until she could see Luke's face. She'd recognized his coattails, but Luke had never floated before.

"Van!" Tear instantly focused on her brother. Guy got him between him and what had to be Luke. "Luke, you okay?"

"Are you Luke or Lorelei?" Jade inquired cautiously.

"I…" Luke started to hold his own forehead now. "Never mind me, stop Master Van!"

"Still calling him Master?" Asch managed to gasp out.

"I, ah!" Luke cried out, curling in on himself as though trying to hold something in. "Asch, run…"

"I'm hanging in midair, so how am I supposed to run! Put me down!"

"I'm not doing that!" Luke started to glow, brighter and brighter.

Natalia and Guy exchanged glances and then moved. Natalia tried to pull Asch away, soon joined by Jade, and Guy tried to haul Luke, but both of them were kept hovering over their locations on the glyph even though the others were free to move.

The light grew too bright for anyone to see anything, then Luke screamed. Asch echoed him a second later.

The glyph vanished, but no one was reassured, waiting for the other shoe to drop. The two of them were released, and the force he'd been pulling Luke with coupled with Luke's weight sent Guy and Luke tumbling to the floor together. Jade, with Natalia's help, caught Asch with a little more dignity.

Then wings exploded from Asch's back, knocking the two of them away. The Key of Lorelei came out, appearing in the palm of Asch's hand. "Asch?" Anise was the only one in a position to see Asch's face, and whatever was there made her eyes widen.

"Leave." The sword swept through the air and only those who had been here when Luke awakened remained. Them, and Asch. Or perhaps not.

"Lorelei?" Luke got to his feet first, but then shook his wings and hovered, disconcerted by the evident discomfort touching the ground caused him.

"Yes," what had been Asch answered. "You don't have control over enough of our fonon to contest me for it. Not yet. Your friends are destined to die with Auldrant, with me. You can save them… if Eldrant rises. But, as Asch threatened before, I will kill, or hurt, them if you try to oppose me or Vandesdelca."

Luke grasped the air, trying something, possibly his overlimit, but with a twitch of the Key his hands jerked away with a cry.

"You can't fight me. Gather those you care for, protect them, because the end of Auldrant is near."

"What will happen to Asch?"

"Do you have to ask?"

"No…" Luke's horror made him draw away with a twitch of those wings.

"What will happen to Asch?" Vandesdelca did not like the sound of that. "Answer me, Lorelei!"

"Asch… You chose an apt name. He was never anything more than the clay mold a piece of jewelry is cast in: made to be broken to reveal the treasure inside. Asch was meant to die at Akzeriuth if you hadn't created Luke, destroying 'the city and himself.' Then, Luke would have risen from those ashes. He is doomed, as are all the originals. I suppose if you want him saved he could be given to Luke, but I don't know if he would be willing to be saved. He sees Luke as a thief of his self: he isn't likely to entrust him with that self, not even if it is that or die."

"Don't say that about him!"

"Why not? It's true. His only reason to be born was to bring you about. Do you know the odds of a human possessing our fonon frequency naturally? Exactly zero."

"And I was only born to die to spare him! It doesn't matter what you say, he's a person and he's alive!" Luke's wings flared out on the final word, clearly prepared to fight again even though he had to know it would be hopeless.

"…you're right. Or I wish you were." Lorelei sounded so sad. "But since the Score it hasn't been that way. It must be changed, Luke. I hoped, once, that you and Asch could change it without Eldrant being necessary… but that was as foolish as all hope in the face of inevitability has been since the Score began. It's not fair to you to let you think there's a chance when I know better, let you hate yourself for trying and failing to save this world, just as I did."

Faced with mourning instead of anger, Luke's resolve to fight dwindled. "I don't want him to die. I've taken so much from him, I don't want him to die."

"You view him as someone worth saving, but not yourself."

Luke didn't answer, but the fact he looked away was answer enough.

"You killed to protect and were used against your will. You tried to save Akzeriuth, remember. He killed quite willingly, murdered in fact. Have you forgotten that his name is Asch the _Bloody_?"

"I know, but…" At first it seemed that Luke simply couldn't find a reasonable objection. Then his wings flared out again as he entered overlimit and looked up. "I don't care!" He darted forward, swiping at Lorelei's chest and then vanished into the gold of hyperresonance.

"Admirable," Lorelei admitted once the light show was over. "His determination, if not his sense, not on Auldrant. But unlike this world Eldrant will be a place where it is possible to rage against fate and win." Lorelei turned and presented the Key of Lorelei to Van. "This is rightfully yours."

"He took Asch?" Van examined the blade, the legendary key that sealed Lorelei into the Score, the sword and armor of Yulia.

"Yes. He won't be able to keep him, he has no ability to control, but I'm sure he will come up with something." After Van had taken the key Lorelei returned to the center of the room, where he had floated before Luke awoke. "What would you have me do now?"

"Will you be able to keep working? You seem weaker." Tired and drained.

"This body is human: it is not a pure vessel. Also, I was able to draw on Luke's power as well as my own to strengthen the children. I am no longer able to, and the Score steals away most of my own power. It is also against the Score's will for me to leave the core, and so I must dedicate some of what remains to fighting that urge to return by remembering that I am also compelled by the pact to aid Yulia's descendants. If you were to sing the Grand Fonic Hymn on occasion it would help." Lorelei's eyes closed. "And the Key will be able to compel more strength from me than I would be able to muster on my own."

"You truly have that little self-control?"

"Do you know what brought about the war that started all of this? My discovery. The possibility that mankind could control the unwritten future and shape it to its own ends. In the end… as long as I could control myself that power could be wrested from me. I placed my own will in Yulia's hands for safekeeping. Perhaps that was a weak choice, but I could see no other way past. I am the manifestation of all memories, of the will and choices of all that live. And they themselves wanted a single individual, although they had several choices, to determine all and lead them to prosperity. But… that was too much to ask of anyone, even Yulia. She bought a world doomed to death within a decade two thousand years and another chance, a chance for its children to live on. I chose well, but… I wish I could have chosen choice."

"Do you need me to sing the hymn now?"

Lorelei looked down at him. "Do you pity me, Vandesdelca? Why? This is what I deserve. I am this world's guardian and I have failed in my duties. I have failed in my purpose for existence."

Although Lorelei was in Asch's body now Van was still reminded of when he had fought Luke. "Can you not live without a purpose?"

It seemed that Lorelei remembered that conversation as well. "I am a fonon sentience, Vandesdelca. I _am_ a purpose. I exist to ensure Auldrant's harmony and when I fail in that purpose then I will die with it. It will be no more than I deserve." Then Lorelei's somewhat condescending yet mostly self-mocking smile faded. "Luke's question would indeed have been foolish for a human, however. The purpose of a human's life is to live. That is more than enough. The conflict between that and his true nature is not pleasant."

"His true nature?"

"To ensure that others live. I am not a single life. The selfishness that is admirable in humans, the selfishness and determination to live on no matter what that he lacks is the wrong manner of being for an existence that may itself die millions of times but will live on if others live. His comrades try to re-teach him selfishness so that he won't get himself killed, but his instincts say that if he wishes to live on he _must_ place others before himself and regard his own life as meaningless." A fonon sentience's manifestation could be destroyed, but as long as the fonon existed another body could simply be made. "Asch wishes… Asch sees Luke as the one who stole from him. If Luke sees himself as worthless that means that Asch lost to someone worthless, that others viewed him as someone worthless. Luke's very guilt and desire to atone cause Asch to refuse his efforts."

Van knew how convenient that was. "I suspected as much."

"Luke doesn't want to die, Vandesdelca, at the root, especially because he will die if he fails all those he loves. I don't want to die," Lorelei confessed, and raw pain dripped from the voice of sound and song itself like blood leaking past the bandages that concealed a mortal wound. "I don't want to fail them. Millions of people, Vandesdelca, millions of hopes and fears and loves and tragedies and _lives._ I exist to care for them, it is my nature to love them and _I have failed them_." Agony. The same agony that memories of Hod caused Van. "All, all I can do is, is help kill them."

It was then that Van realized why Luke had such difficulty with having killed. For them, hurting someone else was hurting themselves. As sickening and wrong as testing a honed blade against first his thumb and then, sometimes, when he couldn't wake up from the need that quickly tracing it along his wrist, never more than a few drops of blood spilled. Everything in him crying out against it, but part of him, oh, a part, knew that he deserved it.

But he couldn't, first for his baby sister who didn't have anyone else but Grandfather, and Teodoro had knowingly let that happen to their parents and Van and everyone, so he couldn't trust him with Mystearica, and then for both atonement and vengeance.

He didn't deserve the mercy of death, after all, the honorable death granted to those who had failed their lords. No, for all those he had failed he didn't deserve for the pain to be over so quickly. So he shouldn't flirt with death, take such huge risks on the battlefield, deal to himself the wounds others had the right to give him.

Yet it reminded him, when he slipped and gave into that urge, that he didn't want to die. Not yet. It was a truism that fighting could restore the will to live, because people didn't appreciate what came free, and nearly losing it would make them grasp it.

Feeling parts of himself die, dealing wounds onto his own flesh and blood, was restoring Lorelei's will to live the way that same dangerous medicine had often been the one thing that would restore Van's.

For Lorelei, who seemed to have been resigned to death for two thousand years, the return of the desire to live was no boon. He was still doomed, all of Auldrant was doomed, but now he once again felt that desire to save lives no matter if it was impossible or not that drove Luke. "They're going to die," Lorelei reminded himself, begging its heart to stop beating once again. "They will, _oh my precious ones_."

He buried his face in his hands and shook with the force of it. "There's a little newborn baby girl in Engave who was just named Iris, and her parents have already planted a little garden for her with flowers and strawberries that she can tend herself when she grows old enough, but she's going to be burned alive next year, Kimlascan soldiers looting her family's home along with everything else there and then setting fire to the village so that the only food in Malkuth will be in their possession and Grand Chokmah's dwindling storehouses, and her dying mother will lie on the floor unable to reach the crib, too wounded by how they used her, unable to even hold her crying child as they both perish. Her father will die in the fall of Grand Chokmah, never knowing what happened to them." But Lorelei knew. Lorelei knew that and so much else, this was just one tragedy out of millions.

Fon Master Ion had known his own death. Lorelei knew his own _millions_ of deaths.

"I want to save them."

As Ion had wanted to live.

"And I can't."

As Ion had also known.

"All I can do is try to ensure that_ something_ survives."

As Ion had wanted there to be a replica of himself that Van could use to destroy this world and create the new one they both longed for. Luke was Lorelei's replica, replacement.

"But to do that, to do that… _oh, my precious ones_." Lorelei's hands covered Asch's eyes and his wings wrapped around himself to hide his shameful self and his pain. "I'm sorry…"

The trash that Ion had hated Lorelei loved, even though it was humanity's nature that had, in the beginning and the end, done this to Lorelei.

Van sang, as the one mercy he could, or would, grant him, and did not comment on the muffled sobs that escaped the shielding feathers.

* * *

_Yeaaaah, neither of them are well in this fic. Not that Luke or Asch are well in the game, and they're really the best analogues._


	4. For You

So, I'm trying to get back on a regular posting schedule (back when I was healthy, I was updating everything weekly on Fridays), but the next chapter of _Embers_ is coming out tomorrow and so it's not like anyone will be reading _my _stuff. Vathara's worldbuilding: it is made of awesome.

* * *

"Well, it's a sephiroth, and we don't recognize it, so by process of elimination this should be the Radiation Gate." Guy forced himself not to get sidetracked by the ancient fontech awesomeness.

"Why would Lorelei send us to the Radiation Gate?" Tear wondered.

"Are you sure that was Lorelei?" Anise asked.

Tear nodded. She'd been possessed by Lorelei before, so they'd take her word for it.

The princess frowned. "First Luke, and now Asch…" If only there was something she could have done!

The fon master smiled, as always. "Don't worry, Natalia. Luke is still there, I'm sure he'll find some way to help."

"Come on, Ion, against Lorelei? And Van?" This was Luke he was talking about.

"Regardless, Anise, I think our first step should be finding our way out of here." That turned out to be easier said than done. The monsters here were considerably stronger than the ones at the Absorption Gate, possibly because the fonons that came out here were concentrated, the power not yet drawn on by the rest of the planet. If someone planted selenias here the entire gate would very likely be covered in the flowers within a decade, Jade knew. The fonon sponges might be prized in Yulia City as the only flower that grew without sunlight but they were hated weeds anywhere reliant on large amounts of fonic artes or fontech, like Grand Chokmah.

They had been forced to stop to rest almost right away and were just finishing up a meal when Luke appeared in their midst, or above their midst.

The golden light had given everyone time to prepare, although Jade was the only one to actually draw his weapon. "Hey, guys." Luke looked prepared for immanent rejection, although he tried to act like normal. "I'm sorry." Post-Akzeriuth normal, anyway.

"Luke, are you alright?" Tear was genuinely concerned.

"Get down here," Guy beckoned. "Man, Luke, you had all of us worried." Luke did descend, but he didn't touch the 'ground' they were standing on. That reminded them of when Lorelei had possessed Tear: she'd hovered as well. "Is there some reason you're floating like that?"

"I…" Luke looked down at the ground, and his toes curled up to get a bit further away from it. "I think I understand how you feel about women now, Guy. Just _thinking _about it makes me want to get away."

"Do you have any idea why?" Jade inquired.

Luke shook his head. "It feels like it's going to grab me, or swallow me, or…" His blush was shame at being so afraid, not normal embarrassment. "But that's not important." Luke's feelings weren't. "When we fell, Master Van sang the Grand Fonic Hymn and Lorelei ended up in my body. I woke up when Asch figured out that Lorelei was using me to do… something. I called you guys for help, but since Lorelei couldn't take back my body he took over Asch's instead. He's weaker in Asch's body than he would be in mine, but I still can't fight him. So much more of the seventh fonon is him than is me that he just drowns me out when I try to do anything. He said that Asch would die along with him, and that I could save Asch if he let me, if Asch let me, so I managed to take Asch and run. I couldn't do anything else."

"What do you mean by 'take' Asch?" Asch clearly wasn't here.

Luke opened his cupped hands and a small light, gold-red tainted with rainbow flecks, hovered above them. "This is… the part of Asch that is Asch. Lorelei shoved him into a corner to make space, so… He was almost halfway out of his body already." And if that had happened he would have gone to the fon belt and died. "I think I can make him a new one. It would be a replica, though, and I don't know if he'd be willing to stay in it. Lorelei thought he would rather die than let me save him." Luke looked sick at the thought.

"A replacement, replica body?" That was edging into dangerous territory. Frowning, Jade told him that, "What did you mean by more of the seventh fonon being Lorelei than you?"

"Oh, that." Luke's eyes grew bleaker. "I'm Asch's replica, but I'm not his replacement. I'm Lorelei's."

"Lorelei's… replacement?" That made no sense to Guy.

"The way Eldrant will be Auldrant's replacement," Luke explained.

"Eldrant? The promised land of ancient Ispanian myth?"

Jade was correct. "I… know some of what Lorelei knows. It's because we're still connected and he wants me to know, so I don't fight him. The Score was meant to be broken, because it foretells the death of everyone on Auldrant by the end of this century. But the only way to do that is to destroy the planet's memory and kill Lorelei by destroying the planet and replacing it with a replica world. The myths are left over from before the Order suppressed the knowledge so people would follow the Score. So… Asch was born so that I would be, so there would be a replacement sentience for the replacement world." Luke reached out to the small light that was Asch but didn't dare to touch.

"How ironic." Replacing the dying… "How very, very ironic," Jade mused.

"He thinks that Asch is just ashes, the… remains of what you have to burn up to have a fire. But that's not true, it's not, Asch is alive, everyone is alive!" Luke sounded more like he was trying to convince himself than the universe. "It's not true…" It couldn't be true. Please, don't let it be! Luke's denial after Akzeriuth hadn't been denial of his guilt. It wasn't his fault because it hadn't happened, it couldn't be his fault because things like that couldn't happen… right? Those people couldn't be dead, Master Van couldn't have used him like that and left him to die, it couldn't be true! And yet it was.

"Hey, Luke, come on." Guy walked forward, stepping inside the curve of the wings and put a hand on Luke's shoulder. "Luke, look at me."

Hesitantly, Luke obeyed.

"We're all alive, right? And while there's life there's hope. People can change, people can make things right even if they can't undo them. You taught me that, Luke."

"But that's not how it works. Not while the Score exists. Not for anyone but me and the few people I can protect. And if we stop Van, if Eldrant fails, if I cease to be… then the Score will happen, Guy. I don't know what to do. If even Lorelei can't save anyone then how can I? He's so much stronger than I am, and he knows so much more."

"Wait, cease to be?"

"I'm… Lorelei is the memory of Auldrant. A replica Lorelei isn't a replica human but a replica world. I'm… potential, now. The seventh fonon is time among other things and time is strange. But if Eldrant is prevented then I cease to be. I would still exist in Lorelei's memories so I wouldn't never have been, but… I wouldn't be able to live or protect you anymore, and Lorelei is bound by the Score, which means without me then you are, and the Score will come true and everyone will die. Lorelei's helping Van partially because of the hymn and partially so that… it's over quickly, and at least the replicas of his people can survive." Luke shook his head. "I don't know… but there has to be a way. There has to be a way to save this world, and Lorelei."

"What about you, Luke?"

"Guy… I don't want to live at the cost of millions of people dying. It's hard enough just living with having stolen Asch's life, and the lives of those people at Akzeriuth. I said that if I could bring back Akzeriuth and it meant dying I would. I want people to live because of me, Guy, not die!"

"But the Score isn't valid anymore," Natalia objected.

Luke shook his head. "It is, for Lorelei. It's not for me, but that's only because right now Eldrant is a second future that opposes the Score. We have the choice between one prophecy and another, right now, and we can choose to do things that follow one or the other at any moment. The Score isn't gone, it's just not absolute."

"And if we stop Van then it becomes absolute again." And stopping her brother meant killing Luke.

"There's nothing I can do… but I can't just sit back and do nothing." The same resolution as after Akzeriuth. "So…" He stepped back, or backwinged from Guy and held out his arms around Asch's light. Closing his eyes, he started to call, "Asch," in a way that wasn't singing but Song. "My original." That wasn't enough, he had to describe Asch to call the fonons and wake Asch up and… "Light of the sacred flame, guardian of the hearth, inheritor of the power of Lorelei, born by the will of Yulia, Chosen One," that got a response, Van had named him that, "desecrated altar," Asch the Bloody, tainted ashes, "god-general, princess' beloved," that one helped shape the body but made Asch's spirit turn away. To think that 'desecrated altar' was a name he accepted and not that people cared for him! "Protector of Auldrant, student of Van," they both still loved him, even after all this, "demigod," for he had power that should only be Lorelei's, "Mother's son," yes, their mother loved him, and Asch her. "Loving Son, Son of house Fabre." Asch might reject it but it was still truth, and thus needed to be said.

"Murderer," Luke named him, even though the truth hurt and he didn't want to say such things of Asch. "Traitor," for he had betrayed Kimlasca and his family by serving Van. Then he'd betrayed Van: yes, treason was surely part of his nature. "Sacrifice, weapon." No wonder Asch wasn't all that eager to return to this life. "Broken heart, lost child." They had so many horrible things in common.

It was that which made Luke realize the key. "My other half. My source, my home, my chosen. The one I need. The one who cannot be replaced."

No other would be Asch, who had sheltered Luke for the first ten years of their existence. No other could be that for him: not Van, not their parents, not Lorelei, not Tear, not anyone. They might not remember what they had shared, but their souls knew.

Luke had thought that Asch wouldn't be willing to manifest if Luke wanted him to, so he'd mostly been giving him power, trying to make him more real so he could manifest himself. Instead, Luke beckoned the light towards him, pressed it into his own heart. _"Asch." _

"_What the…"_ Asch's tone started out irritated, angry as usual when he awoke but then realized something was different.

"_Here,"_ Luke told him, and yielded control.

"_What are you doing?" _Half rejection of anything Luke did for him and half confusion, surprise, at the feelings.

"_I couldn't fight Lorelei for control of your body, so I'm giving you mine."_

"_What? Who asked you?"_

"_No one. I need you, Asch. I can't do this by myself. And I only had that body because of you. I'm only myself because of you. You're the most important person to me, more than Van or Mother or anyone, even Guy. I would never stop grieving if you died. No one could take your place. Even when I didn't know you were important to me. I can make myself another body but no one could make another you."_

Asch had needed to hear that, no, to believe that, but he would know if Luke was lying when they were like this.

"_It's not something you will owe me for or something I owe you. It's not just that, Asch, that was what I was missing. It's something I want. Maybe it's selfish to want you to live, or pointless like Lorelei thinks, but I don't care if it is. I want you to live, Asch. Even if you don't want to. I'll fight you if I have to,"_ Luke threatened. _"I want you to live. I need you, Asch." _

Him and him alone.

"_Dying's… Weak. It's over, and everything's just ashes and ruin. Living is harder. I'd live for you, Asch. I'd keep fighting no matter what for you. I wouldn't die to save you because if I died I couldn't be with you, and I wouldn't die trying to save you because that would mean I'd failed." _

"_You…"_ Asch didn't know what to say.

"_If you die, I'll never forgive you!" _And he'd never forgive himself.

He meant that. Asch meant that to him. Asch wasn't just the one that took from Luke, or worse, should take but left Luke with so much that wasn't Luke's but Asch's, constant unwanted reminders that dogged his steps. Asch was someone Luke actually wanted to exist. Someone that gave him a reason to be instead of taking them away. _"Fine." _

"_Thank you." _Asch felt him withdraw.

"_Where are you going?"_

"_Another body." _

"_If you can just make one then make me one. I don't want a body that you've been using."_ That would be worse than wearing someone else's underwear. Eww.

"_I was trying to, but you wouldn't move into it." _

"_On second thought, do I want to trust a body you made?"_

"_Just until we get yours back?"_

"_From Lorelei?" _Asch had been swept aside like, like nothing. Like ashes swept away by the maids, tossed in the wastebasket. _"Yeah right."_

"_Well, the other options are worse." _

"_You have a point." _Asch let Luke do something that felt like putting clay on him and patting it into shape, until gradually the clay began to become him, or more of him. Luke really was making a body. And fussing over it, wanting to do a good job for him. Some of it felt like Luke, and Asch realized before he asked that Luke wasn't using his own fonons for it, just adding to Asch's, and that what felt like Luke within Asch had come from Asch's own core. Reaching out to Luke he felt himself there, and it wasn't just that they were… It was because Luke was Asch's isofon, but it wasn't as cold and meaningless as he'd thought that was, a puppet and another puppet pulling its strings. Luke had come from within Asch. Not quite his son, not quite his other half, but they needed each other. There was no other one that could fill the void in Luke's heart or Asch's.

That meant that yes, Luke did need him. Him and him alone. Luke had even been willing to fight Lorelei, the fonon sentience and his other isofon, for Asch's sake.

It wasn't because Asch was nice (he wasn't) or anything anyone else could mimic or outdo him in. He wasn't just anything to Luke. He was, not Asch, Luke hated that Asch called himself that, but_ himself_ to Luke. Luke wanted him to live. It didn't matter if Asch threw Luke out of the only home he had ever known, it didn't matter if he insulted him or beat him up or made him have to try not to cry when he lay in bed awake at night or gave him fuel for further nightmares. It didn't matter if Asch only spoke to him in insults and headaches.

Luke wanted him to live.

Not because Asch had a power that would be useful, or was a noble, or was strong, or… Because knowing that Asch lived was important to Luke. Asch was important. Luke didn't want anything of Asch but for him to live and be happy.

Oh, he wanted other things, to be the one to help Asch live and be happy, for Asch to smile at him, but those weren't necessary. If Asch lived, truly lived, Luke would be content. He wouldn't demand anything else from him. Asch's existence was precious to him, in and of itself.

So Asch opened his eyes to see Luke's closed ones framed by short red-orange hair and the wings he'd seen so briefly before. He realized that he was hovering the way he had that time, but he wasn't afraid.


	5. Down

_I lost my memory card containing my Tales of the Abyss save file (second playthrough just before the final boss, almost all the titles) when my old PS2 was stolen. Every so often, I find myself really, really wanting to replay the game, and then I remember that the emotional experience of a second playthrough of this game can be roughly approximated thus:_

_Find a sharp knife._

_Turn on the game._

_Roll 1d6 every scene containing dialogue._

_Stab yourself in the heart a number of times equal to the number rolled._

_Things that are different on second playthrough: everything. Early game Tear is even more awesome, kind, and perceptive (which makes late game Tear look even worse by comparison, sadly). Early game Guy is a bitch, which makes him even more awesome in the late game because you can see that yes, he actually did hate and despise Luke at one point and he's working to overcome it (so his random moments of utter fail as a friend in the last third become perfectly understandable backsliding instead of, well, fail). Everyone's character becomes so much clearer and even more alive when you can catch the foreshadowing. Hindsight is 20/20, after all._

_The game is a heartrending beautiful tragedy on first playthrough. On second? It jams it into you just how short and bleak life is, and what bastards people can be (even if/especially if they love you) so that it can send the message that life, nasty, brutish and short as it is, is still worth living despite this. Is precious because of this. It's cathartic because it's painful._

* * *

"Asch." Luke was smiling in genuine relief.

He wasn't the only one to say his name.

"Asch!" Natalia's happiness to see him rang out.

Was this the real thing, and if so, how? "Asch?" the Necromancer queried.

"Asch, how do you feel?" his once-manservant wondered.

Anise looked from around Jade, who she had ducked behind with Ion. Hyperresonances were bad news and the colonel was better cover than anything else here. "Wow, that was weird. You okay, Asch?"

"You revived Asch? That's great, Luke!" Ion was proud of him.

Tear just smiled as Luke wrapped his arms around Asch, let gravity start affecting him again, and lowered him to the ground.

"Why do you have wings?" Asch asked him.

"I woke up with them. Lorelei also made you grow them when he took over your body." Luke looked down. "And since I woke up I can't stand the idea of touching the ground. Or… of falling? I don't think that's it, though. Being dragged down. Into the Core, being trapped…" Luke's wings flapped and he lunged three feet up. "Uh, would you mind if we went somewhere else? We're in one of the Sephiroth and I keep feeling like I'm going to…"

"Luke, touch the ground," Asch ordered. "This isn't your fear."

"…I guess I can try. I mean, people are going to stare at me if I float around like this." Luke couldn't quite manage to touch it with his feet at first, so he ended up touching the walkway with a finger. Nothing happened, and he seemed a bit relieved. A toe was next, then he stood on tiptoe on one, then both feet. "I don't think I could stand putting any weight on them, though. And does anyone have some spare sandals or something?"

"Do you have to have the wings to float?" Guy asked as Tear fished around in the item bag. "If you can look like you're walking around like normal, even on tip-toes, that's good enough. Don't push yourself, Luke."

"The wings feel like they're holding me up even if they aren't really." They shivered.

Jade walked forward, examining the wings. Yes, they were more for show than practical, meaning they were of value as a symbol, which meant… "And you have nightmares about the dead rising out of the miasma and pulling you down with them already."

"He does?" Natalia asked. "Why didn't you tell us?"

"Luke, you still have nightmares?" Tear was worried now, again.

"Jade!"

"Luckily, ladies, I think there might be a solution," Jade was undeterred. "It seems this little boy needs someone to hold his hand."

"Jade!"

"What? You don't trust us to pull you out of the abyss?"

"…You're right." Luke held his hands out and found them taken first by Asch, who was right there, then Jade's firm grip, then Guy's sure one, then Tear's soft hold, Natalia's grasp, Ion's frail yet determined strength, and finally Anise grabbed one too, looking a little embarrassed about the whole thing. "Guys." He let his wings drift away, dispersing into fonons, and was able to trust just a little bit of his weight to them.

"It felt like you were going to float away," Tear told him. Although she clearly missed the wings. They had been all fluffy and cute.

"Who has the first shift at hand-holding duty?" Jade asked the others.

"Not me!" Anise declared. She had dibs on Ion.

"Do you think you can fight, Luke?" Guy was a little worried about that.

"I'll be fine, I'll just float during it. Don't worry about me." I don't want to be a burden.

"I'll take the first shift. Don't worry about it, Luke. I taught you how to walk, remember?" He'd had to help keep Luke upright then, this wasn't a bother.

The others let go with various feelings on the subject. When Luke's other hand was free he clung to Guy's with it as well and Guy could start to feel gravity lose its hold on him. "Uh, a little help here?"

"I'll be fine," Luke told him.

"Luke, I know what you're dealing with. Trust me, better safe than sorry. If you have another, or in your case an actual bad experience it's going to be a lot tougher to beat this." Guy placed his other hand on top of Luke's. Let's see, there were the girls (scary), Jade (even scarier), Asch (no way), and Ion. "Ion, do you want to lend a hand?"

"Of course." Ion smiled.

"Thanks." Luke took a deep breath and Asch, watching, could see his muscles tense as he actually started putting weight on his feet again. Asch ended up following along behind them, which left Anise, Tear, Natalia and Jade as the vanguard.

When they next stopped to eat Luke looked horribly uncertain at the idea of sitting down on the ground.

They weren't able to convince Luke to sleep until they reached Grand Chokmah. A bedroll in the sephiroth was out of the question and the Albiore was flying, which was apparently far too much like being in the core. Normally, Jade would have gone to his own home without inviting the others, forcing them to pay for a room at the inn, but after what they'd just found out?

Peony was the last surviving descendant of the imperial family that had condemned Hod to its fate, and no amount of bodyguards could protect him from Lorelei, not if Lorelei could reach around the world to take replica data.

No amount of conventional bodyguards, at least.

"I know what Lorelei did, but…" Luke looked sick at the thought. "I don't know what you think I can do about it. He isn't a replica."

"Would it make that much difference if he was?" Jade asked, and an instant later became furious with himself. Was he seriously considering making Peony a replica to extend his life? That was what Peony's father had wanted, that was the cause of this! How could he think of doing to Peony what had killed his family, how could he think of trying what he had done to Professor Nebilim a second time? Was he still making the same mistakes over and over?

"I managed to snatch Asch away from Lorelei and make him a replica body even though he wasn't originally a replica, but I wouldn't have won if Lorelei had fought me for him. I can't fight Lorelei, not for control of the fonon or originals." Luke knew that he simply couldn't win. Not against Lorelei, or the Score.

It would all end up in screams, in death and drowning. In the miasma.

Just like when he tried to save Akzeriuth, tricked into pitting himself against Asch and the city's score of death. At least he'd saved Asch?

The thought was cold comfort, remembering the sight of that drowning boy. Not to mention what Asch had been like back then. He would have traded Asch's life for that boy's in a heartbeat. He would have traded his own even more quickly. If only he'd had this power then! But that would have been fighting the boy's score of death. Asch had missed his instant of death because Luke had been there, and Luke had been strong enough to survive something that would have killed a human.

Was there any way to take Peony's place? "I guess I could turn him into a replica," Luke suggested, and paled. "That's what Lorelei was talking about."

"What do you mean, Luke?" Tear asked.

"That I should save who I can. The people I wanted with me on Eldrant, to teach the replicas and decide what the new world would be like."

They looked at each other, all knowing that Peony was just as beloved and ten times more experienced with the reality of ruling than Natalia. If the new world needed a ruler, Peony was the best choice.

"If Van Grants is correct, that the Score is merely Lorelei's memory, I wonder what you remember." Jade met Luke's eyes with shadowed red. "Do you remember gathering your chosen? The only decent member of Kimlasca's nobility, the emperor of Malkuth, the man who raised you and would theoretically know how to raise replicas… even if not really," he added, glancing at Guy. "Ion's friend," when Ion was the first other replica Luke had met: perhaps the fon master of the new world? "And the expert on fomicry." Was Jade expected to assist?

"No! It's not like that!" Or was it. Luke looked at all of them for support. Tear was ice, thin and brittle, as she had been since her beloved brother and the boy she had started to fall in love with had destroyed Akzeriuth. Guy looked away, in a way that might as well have been screaming that Jade was right and he didn't hold it against Luke but he didn't approve either. Natalia looked surprised and thoughtful, the princess contemplating yet another disturbing revelation. They really were trapped between two scores?

Ion gave nothing away, as always, but his smile had disturbing implications in this context. Anise didn't really care, except for the part of her that thought about everything in terms of how interesting it was or how much it could benefit her.

Asch snorted. "If he remembered the future he wouldn't have fallen for it." 'It' was obviously Akzeriuth.

Luke hung his head. "I would have, if Lorelei kept me from seeing it. I've had those headaches for years."

"The same as what overwhelms my mind…" Asch scowled. "So what? So what if you are gathering people to look after your subjects?"

"People to… Oh," Luke realized, brightening. "I'm not." Thank goodness. "If I was, if that was all this is, I wouldn't have saved you."

It only took Jade a moment to make the connection. "True. Although awakening to your true nature appears to have done wonders for your intelligence."

"What are you talking about?" They had better not be saying that Asch was useless. No, he knew that Luke wouldn't say something like that.

And yet it sounded familiar somehow. Like there was something he should remember. It made him think of the presence-that-was-Lorelei, which would explain why he wouldn't remember anything. Lorelei overwhelmed. Maybe he'd felt something in that mass of memories that kept slipping out of his grasp now that he'd awakened to himself again?

"You can't be made into a replica. I made you a body out of seventh fonons, but your personal fonons are still a mix," Luke explained. "If your mind was made up of nothing but seventh fonons, there wouldn't be any barrier between us anymore. You'd cease to be you and there'd be nothing left but a part of us. A part of Lorelei, since you're an original." A part of Lorelei that would be overwritten by Eldrant, by Luke, like the rest of Auldrant.

For Eldrant to exist, Asch's soul would have to be destroyed. Luke _was _Eldrant.

It wasn't just that Lorelei was right that Luke couldn't save him. It was that for Asch to live, Luke would have to die. For Luke to live, Asch would have to die.

It felt like a hole opened up in the pit of his stomach, it felt like the depths of despair. How could he, how could a whole world live with this? With so many people dying, all of Auldrant, just so that he could live? Even if Luke went and collected everyone's souls and changed them the way Lorelei was gathering replica data to make bodies, even if every single other living soul was reborn on Eldrant instead of dying, Asch could not be saved.

Just like Lorelei. No matter what, Lorelei, Lorelei-who-was-him would have to die.

Luke would have been happy to die to save Akzeriuth. He was willing to die if that was what it took to save Auldrant, but it wouldn't. Without him everything would just fall into the miasma, he could feel it pulling at him, that old hatred, ancient grudges, death and vengeance and madness, _pulling at him, _wanting to devour everything, everything, not wanting to let him fly free, escape the taint of Lorelei's history and Auldrant's… No, _his _history, it was his fault the people of Akzeriuth had joined the miasma: now Eldrant was tainted with that sin. Van had done that to him in order to spare Asch, and he felt the part of him that Lorelei had woken, the part of him that looked forward suddenly _hate _Van, and it made him shiver.

No, he was Luke! Luke fon Fabre!

Except he wasn't. He never had been.

A _crack _echoed in the room, and Luke took a breath. Raised a trembling hand to feel the red mark on his face, raised his eyes to meet Jade's to see that Jade was studying him, hand drawn back to deliver another blow if that was what it took to snap him out of it.

"Thanks," was all Luke could say, taking a deep breath, as he registered Tear's protest. "It's okay, I needed that."

"Oh, anytime." Jade shook his hand, made a fist and lowered his arm again. "I've wanted been wanting to do that since we first met," he added, tone flippant as though he hadn't just struck an inhuman being capable of annihilating cities in a moment of inattention. If Luke had acted reflexively to defend himself with that power, Jade would be dead.

How long until Luke became capable of such things?


	6. In Line

_There's a scene you can trigger in Baticul where Jade expresses some fairly radical sentiments for Auldrant's culture. Given Jade's experiences with nobility other than Luke and Peony, who technically aren't (they're both illegitimate in different ways), and certainly weren't raised that way (in contrast to Natalia, who he takes a few digs at), I can certainly see where he's coming from._

_I need to hunt down that scene, because a revolution run by Jade would be freaking scary and vastly amusing._

* * *

His Imperial Majesty _would _insist on having the windows open.

Jade hadn't even tried to argue. After all, it wasn't like it would make any difference against _Lorelei. _Not to mention that the breeze lessened the smell of rappig. It wasn't that Peony's rappigs weren't clean creatures who took a positive delight in taking baths, between the warm water and the brushing afterwards, but they were still warm, fluffy, silly creatures. There was a sense of brainlessness to them, like they should be prey for the first predator that came along, and Jade wasn't allowed to experiment or barbeque them. And they insisted on trying to get pettings out of him. Two of them had been snuffling around his legs until they'd finally given up and gone to sleep. Gelda was still leaning against his feet, wuffling occasionally in her sleep. He was certainly not touched at all, despite what Peony might think if he saw.

Kind, friendly, incapable of learning from experience and doomed to a well-earned death because of it… For once, he took no satisfaction from comparing Peony to his pets.

'Cute Jade' indeed…

Still, while it was incredibly foolish to have the windows open, let alone sleep near them, on a bright night with a decent chance of attempted murder, Van's most dangerous assassin was in Peony's bedroom already, standing guard along with Jade.

Luke was the only one with a prayer of stopping Lorelei if he tried to take Grand Chokmah's replica data, and Asch at least had a chance of detecting it in time to wake Luke up. Hopefully. In any case, Luke needed to be at his best if he was going to fight the senior fonon sentience, the controller of all life on Auldrant, so Luke was sleeping while Asch stood watch.

Near the window. Jade stood near the door. If someone was going to be shot at through the window he'd rather it was Asch, as a matter of simple practicality. While Jade knew quite a bit about killing, assassination wasn't his specialty. Asch was the one who knew all about _that_, which was why he'd taken up station near the windows without even asking.

Jade had expected him to ask Peony to close them, but perhaps an obvious weakness in their defenses made for bait or something else Asch approved of. Regardless, the fallen prince stood looking out the windows, frowning out at the small vista of the garden and a few of Grand Chokmah's canals. From the look of things he knew where the secret passages were, too. Well, the scores of their builders would have told the Order that. Originally the Order had supported the Malkuth Empire, but a few centuries ago Kimlasca had become their new favorite, and now? Well. There had been indications that a few of Peony's relatives had been helped along to their deaths, just to make sure they wouldn't be able to prefect isofon technology in time to save them. Not that Jade really cared. For one thing, that wouldn't even have been Asch's predecessor, it would have been the one before _him_. Special Operations god-generals had short terms, one way or another. For another, they had deserved it.

The bastards. No, no, Jade scolded himself for that. Calling Peony's family bastards was an insult to Peony and other illegitimate children.

Luke had finally been made comfortable on, or rather in, a large pile of pillows, rappigs and cheagle. The presence of living, breathing warmth seemed to comfort him in the same way the hand-holding did. Perhaps Jade should borrow some of Peony's rappigs when they left, even though Ion had offered to sleep beside Luke when they camped out and the loyal cheagle was always close at hand. There would still be some benefit to dragging Peony's pets along. Unlike rappigs, they couldn't use Ion as food in an emergency and Jade had no idea how to cook cheagle. Not that there was enough meat on the little fuzzball for it to be worth the effort, threats aside.

Normally it was so tiresome when people took him seriously, but the children really weren't old enough to know better. Luke and the cheagle took him seriously and were horrified, Anise and Ion took him seriously and liked him because of it, although what that said about Anise… The girl was a little monster after his own heart and a terrible influence on Ion. Simply terrible. Tsk tsk. As for Ion, he was no sort of restraining influence at all. Not that Peony had been a successful restraining influence on him, either, so really…

Hmm?

One, two, three, four, five, six – yes, all the rappigs were accounted for. One at his feet, two in Luke's pile, three on Peony's alleged bed. No one had tried the door. It was hard to hear if anyone was sneaking around outside over the water flowing in the canals, but he couldn't hear any splashes, either. Peony's chest was rising and falling and if he focused he could hear breathing sounds coming from under those pillows and, yes, there was even some slight movement. Asch didn't seem to have noticed anything.

Yet something had jarred Jade's mind out of that random reverie.

No odd smells, no slight vibrations in the floor or walls that might have come from someone making use of the secret passages.

Well, that covered all the conventional senses, which left some kind of fonic disturbance: the worst case scenario. Unless he had simply been startled by some random rustle caused by Luke rolling over or Asch tapping his foot, silent yet impatient, as he was prone to do.

Still, he took his glasses off. The seventh fonon was the hardest to perceive and it was safe to have them off for a little while. A few seconds didn't come with any _real _risk of his eyeballs exploding inside his head, unless someone had figured out what kind of fonic arte to cast where so the fonons it gave off would overwhelm the glyph.

Asch finally noticed that something was up with Jade and looked at him questioningly, keeping one eye on the rest of the room. Jade frowned, then shrugged, putting them back on. No, no odd seventh fonic phenomena. In fact, there was relatively little fonic activity. With all that had happened, especially the lowering of the land, the planet storm had been on overdrive recently. It was a good sign that things were finally calming down that the amount of ambient fonons was decreasing. Still, it was a little low, especially for Grand Chokmah. Well, it only made sense that the city's fonic defenses would have lowered the amount of fonons in the area. It would probably take the planet storm some time to replace all the fourth fonons especially that had been used up. He should stop by his office and make sure his underlings were collecting adequate data, since this had obvious national security implications. Malkuth relied on its fonists, after all.

Under the circumstances, the war wasn't likely to resume. Belkend was almost a ghost town and Sheridan was far from loyal to the Kimlascan government. They'd been conquered in the last war, and what was another city that had traded hands in the last war? _Akzeriuth_. They had been a Kimlascan city for decades before this and they'd still been sacrificed so casually? No, even if there were fewer ambient fonons Malkuth still had the upper hand: Kimlasca had lost, and as good as lost, its two sources of the fontech that it relied on. Even if Sheridan's native population hadn't evacuated into the trackless Highlands, trying to escape the fate of the other desert city and other city of fontech, it would have been extremely foolish to demand they build more landships, especially after the recent tragedy. No, any Malkuth forces sent there would be welcomed with open arms, after the kingdom of Kimlasca-Lanvaldear's crimes and failure to protect them.

If a war was fought now, Malkuth should win, and Kimlasca would deserve it for what they had done to Akzeriuth and tried to do to the rest of the empire, but that kind of thinking was playing right into the Score's hands. Thank goodness Peony had been able to make his outraged Council see reason. No, revenge for Akzeriuth was a dish better served cold, if at all.

Normally, Peony would have given Luke some token punishment for Akzeriuth, especially since he'd asked for one. It would have made the boy feel better and it would have reassured Kimlasca that Malkuth held Luke responsible instead of Ingobert. Not giving Luke either a sentence or a pardon sent the message that Peony did not hold Luke responsible. Ingobert, or at least the far more intelligent Duke Fabre, had to be aware what that meant.

The peace conference had ended the war but it hadn't really decided anything, either. If blame for Akzeriuth was not officially placed on Luke and the Score was no longer a valid scapegoat either, then until Kimlasca was officially blamed for the destruction of Akzeriuth and made reparations the way they'd been forced to for Hod, Malkuth had a casus belli ready and waiting. Until, of course, Ingobert's government had the sense to take the initiative and offer recompense, publically taking responsibility themselves the way Peony had for Hod, but Jade doubted Ingobert had the courage and Natalia certainly lacked the political acumen.

Trying to wait for the world to forget, well, that wasn't going to happen, and Natalia seemed to think that declaring it simply Luke's fault had closed the matter. Oh no. Oh no it hadn't, and Natalia thinking that the destruction of a city could be shoved under the carpet? The empire had tried that with Hod, and look what that had got them: _Van Grants_.

Jade really _should _warn Natalia in some mocking fashion, but it wasn't as though Jade had any reason to like Kimlasca's government. No, no, if Peony's future heir, whenever he got around to making one, decided to conquer Kimlasca, or was unable to quiet the public demands to, then Natalia or whoever ran the place would deserve what they got. Before Peony took the throne there had been a growing democratic movement in Malkuth, due to the tyrannical excesses of his family. Peony had calmed the people the same way Natalia had won the loyalty of Baticul, but if Ingobert hadn't taken Natalia back and confirmed her as heir he would have had an open insurrection on his hands, and the man likely knew it. When armed mobs clashed with the army in the streets and _won _defending a traitor to the crown and claimant to the throne, that was a warning sign only a fool would miss.

Jade might have joined that democratic movement, back then, if he'd been naïve enough to think that it would do any good. In these days without the score, however? Daath had imposed absolute monarchies because they were easy to control. Nam Cobanda Isle was proof that democratic means could effectively govern a population. Not only that, but effectively govern in _wartime_. Noir had been doing all of that under the Order's nose for years, and the Dark Wings' communication network, used for gathering food and smuggling survivors, was _better than the Order's_, something that would have been impossible if it weren't for replicas and the fact the actions of all of the Dark Wings' senior members weren't included in the Score.

According to the Score, they were already dead. An entire city of people spared by the ripples in the Score caused by replicas?

Spared by Luke, technically. Even though they were originals.

For some reason, Jade suddenly felt, for the second time that night, as though there was something he was missing. Something right in front of his eyes or right on the tip of his tongue, something important. Well, it was a little darker in here than it should be at this time of night, but perhaps a cloud was obscuring part of the fon belt, but that tint…

Purple.

The _miasma_.

He should have noticed the smell – no, not if it had gradually gotten worse. This wasn't a sudden eruption from the ground. The guards would have noticed that and alerted them. The miasma must have gradually crept in, and the city's lights always obscured the fon belt a little.

Yes, Jade saw, stepping quickly to the window. The fon belt was tinted red-violet. It would probably take longer for the effect to become apparent at ground level, but seen through all the layers of the atmosphere, it was clear that the miasma was somehow in the air itself. If the miasma had gotten loose, shouldn't the ground be liquefying under their feet before it reached the atmosphere? Something else had to be going on.

"The fon belt!" Asch finally exclaimed as Jade stepped away from the window.

No time for pointing out Asch's usual lack of awareness of what was going around them. "Luke, your highness, get up." There had to be some way to keep the miasma out of a sealed area: worst came to worst they'd have another peace conference so the rulers could be safe in Yulia City.

Peony woke up quickly, rolling his eyes, but Luke's pile only twitched, then twitched again, more urgently. "Mmph!"

"Luke, Luke?" Asch shoved pillows out of the way until one wouldn't move. He grabbed it and tried to move it, but Luke's arm was in the way.

Luke's arm was _in the pillow._

"The contamination effect," Jade said, scowling, as he bent down to try to remove everything he could. The contamination effect allowed the fonons of so-called solid matter to slide into each other. Good luck trying to convince Luke that the ground wouldn't open up and swallow him after this.

"Stop sinking, dammit!" Asch grabbed for Luke's arm until it stopped slipping through the fonons of his hands. "Thrashing isn't going to help, don't you know how to swim, you stupid dr-" Asch growled, frustrated, half at the situation and half at himself. Of course Luke didn't know how to swim, it wasn't like Baticul's nobility had canals in their backyards the way Grand Chokmah's did and Luke had never been allowed outside the house. "It's more like quicksand. Stop thrashing, focus on my arm and help me pull you up!" Asch ordered.

When Asch was satisfied Luke pulled as directed, and even though Asch tried to brace himself it didn't help. One tug and Asch fell right through the floor with a startled yelp.

Jade sighed, winced, and almost went so far as to facepalm. "Well, Luke can teleport." Hopefully they'd sort themselves out once Luke had time to wake up fully and stop panicking. Worrying about them wouldn't help since it wasn't as if there was anything Jade could do about it. Learning to walk through walls, with all different sorts of materials and fonons involved and changing without warning, had been too dangerous even for him.

Well, the first step to making sure the miasma didn't kill Peony was closing the damn windows.


	7. Into Your Arms

_Yes, I am aware it's only Wednesday. I am posting early this week to let people know that I have a fic (or several fics, depending on the amount of the final bid and the bonus wordcount) up for auction on the lj group Help_Japan. If you want a direct link, go to my profile: the link where it says homepage will take you to my livejournal, where the top public post should link to the comment with my offer. I'd recommend checking out the rest of the post, though, because there are some good authors on there, and apparently so many authors are participating that the Help_Japan group added another post for them to make offers on. There are also posts offering art, physical goods, etc. etc. If there's a fic you wish existed, check it out: it's for a good cause._

**_

* * *

_**

**You stupid…! **Asch tried hitting Luke upside the head, but his other arm passed right through him and letting go of Luke with the arm relative to which Luke was solid was clearly a _very _bad idea. He didn't want to end up stranded in the bedrock under Grand Chokmah.

**Get us back up there right now! Grow those wings again or something! Are you listening to me? **Stupid, stupid replica! Dreck! **Listen to me when I'm yelling at you! **He focused in the way he had to talk to Luke before, channeling his emotions about Luke into it. If he couldn't hit Luke, he could still give him one of those headaches.

_Asch, stoppit! _Luke's body jerked. _I can't stop falling and we're almost there and you're distracting me!_

**There? **Asch didn't regret hurting Luke at all, in this case. If that was what it took to get Luke to answer when he was spoken to.

_Themiasma_.

A burst of panic suddenly, as fonons that Luke had recently shaped into wings exploded outward, into and through Asch as Luke panicked and Asch felt a blurring that had become too familiar recently. Since he'd figured out how to reach his replica, he'd tried to get information from Lorelei, but he just couldn't handle its mind, it sucked him in the way Luke was now.

No, they weren't sucking him in, if they had he'd be dead. Nothing left of him but a hand puppet, just as much a part of them as their left hands.

Even that fear of being absorbed was Luke's fear for him right now. This was too much for him to think. It didn't manifest as physical pain, but the sheer feeling of being overwhelmed, full to bursting with something he couldn't handle wasn't pleasant. The only reason he wasn't registering it as pain was probably because his mind didn't know how to deal with it.

For now there was nothing but panicpanicpanic, Luke blaming himself for whatever he'd done this time, and he really was useless, and how was he doing to fix this, and…

Suddenly they were in open air and Luke's mind pulled away, flinched away, not so much from Asch as from where they were.

His arms and wings wrapped around himself as he shivered, hearing the cold dead empty hatred, feeling its claws, the despair of being alone and abandoned. Like he'd been after Akzeriuth, and this was what he'd done to Akzeriuth!

Luke was too far gone to even register that he'd let go of Asch when panic and the desire to live finally overwhelmed fear and guilt and his wings spread, sending him shooting upwards to the surface through the crust of the outer lands. Even that wasn't fast enough, so instinct summoned hyperresonance to get him to safety.

He threw himself into big warm arms, the only ones that had ever held him, the only person who had ever said that it was alright when he messed up or got upset. The only person who would be patient when he was like this instead of yelling at him. The only person who would pat him on the head and let him finish when he cried, instead of trying to make him stop with cruel words instead of kind ones.

"Master Van!" The words rushed out. He almost babbled, clinging and not thinking, because he was memory and a part of him did remember that any second now he would be pushed away. Or stabbed.

Only one safe place to cry in this world. Only one pair of strong arms willing to hold him. Only one person who understood him and cared about what happened to him. Only one person who really did believe that he was _trying _and it wasn't just that he was lazy or weak or despicable.

And part of Luke did know that the Master Van who had offered him refuge, who had offered him a _home_, found a way for Luke to be free, free to be with the one person who cared about him, his real family, had never really existed.

Master Van might have made him, and part of Luke had been so happy to find that out, to think that Master Van really was almost his real father, but the Master Van who had loved him… existed and didn't exist.

There was Vandesdelca Musto Fende, who had destroyed Hod and used him to save Asch by destroying Akzeriuth. That man, Luke had to kill.

There was Master Van, who had taught him and said that one day Luke could go to live with him and escape the manor. That man, Luke loved and would never hurt. Never.

Two natures, two fates, two sets of memories. What Lorelei had known all this time, about Hod, versus what Master Van had showed Luke in order to give him hope and earn his love.

If Luke became Eldrant, he could determine what the past had been and what the future would be. He could make Master Van Vandesdelca's scored fate.

It would have been an incredible temptation if he'd been thinking clearly enough for it to occur to him. For him to be tempted. No, he was too exhausted and distraught, half awake and entirely desperate. He didn't _want _to think, not when those arms closed around him and he heard Master Van's voice, in that tone that he used to ask what on earth had happened this time? What had Duke Fabre done now, what cruel thing had Natalia said to his student that had killed his appetite?

A hand touched his back, stroked his wings soothingly, and there was a harmony in that murmur that was _right _somehow, that soothed his mind as those hands soothed ruffled feathers, and even though Luke had never been allowed to take refuge in his parents' bed after a nightmare he had still craved it. Was still innocent enough, still enough of a child, to recognize that promise of safety.

To be reassured by sound and touch that it was safe, and they wanted him to calm down.

And go to sleep.

"There now," Lorelei murmured softly, brushing away the few remaining fonons that had made up Luke's wings. He hadn't needed them anymore once he was safe, but he had stopped keeping them in order instead of dematerializing them. Until Lorelei started cleaning them up Luke had been shedding red-gold feathers everywhere. "Hush, little one." He kissed the back of Luke's head when Luke snuggled up against Van a little bit more and made a little sound in the back of his throat that was really nothing more than asking for confirmation that they were there, that they cared enough to reassure him. "It's alright." Lorelei's eyes were shadowed: he and Van both knew that was a lie, but the sleeping child was so very trusting.

Luke weighed practically nothing like this, so now that he'd mostly stopped squirming and dropped off Van simply stood there and raised an eyebrow at Lorelei. What was all this about?

Lorelei was humming under his breath, and Van recognized the tune of the grand fonic hymn. If it could really be called a tune, given how idiosyncratic every line's rhythm and meter was. It seemed all the more genuine for being unpolished, as though it was something an amateur had come with on the spot just for the sake of soothing a child.

Or perhaps Van thought the Grand Fonic Hymn sounded like a lullaby should solely because he'd sung Mystearica to sleep with it for years.

There was love in Lorelei's eyes, the kind there had probably been in his when his little sister was trying to fall asleep after a rough day. The other children had given the ignorant outer worlder hell, and Van hadn't been able to protect her from everything, especially after she'd stopped telling him what they'd done this time so he didn't get in any more trouble for beating up one of them to get a stolen toy back, for example.

She'd blamed herself for causing him so much trouble, but he hadn't minded at all. Just like Luke didn't want to get his beloved Master Van in trouble for sticking up for him, so he'd had to coax Luke to tell him about his day.

He'd known exactly what he was doing when he'd earned the boy's trust. He'd been Luke's parents just as much as he'd been Mystearica's. He knew how to fill that void.

Lorelei was an excessively paternal creature. Or maternal? The ancients had called the sentience 'Mother Auldrant' before the discovery of the seventh fonon. All of Auldrant's people were Lorelei's children, and so was Luke. Eldrant.

If Van didn't make a habit of getting up well before the sun rose Luke might have ended up in his bed, and then Van would have skewered him with the knife he kept under his pillow. He never slept without one, not after too many defenseless nights in Hod's cells. As long as he wasn't killed no one had really cared what was done to or with him.

"I think the miasma distressed him," Lorelei finally told him, still in a soothing tone of voice for Luke's benefit, the sentience's eyes still focused on the sleeping boy.

"Like a uniceros?" They had survived the fall of Hod since they were able to fly, but they hadn't escaped unscathed. Van had found easily two dozen of them on the islands he'd searched for survivors. One of them had breathed its last as he stood there, trying to sing and heal it. Even if he had been able to purify it of the miasma, it would have been fruitless: it would have just breathed more in.

The uniceros was a symbol of purity for good reason.

The miasma Van had breathed in back then was still killing him, it would simply take longer. Of course he never had been pure, had he? He'd been marked as a murderer before he was born.

"The miasma is… a nightmare," Lorelei said softly, a hint of mourning in his voice. And guilt. Always old guilt.

"Can you keep him asleep?" Van had considered telling Lorelei to recapture and imprison Luke after Luke had vanished, but how did you hold someone with the power of hyperresonance? Luke could teleport, destroy any barrier that got in his way… If only Van had that power back then, instead of just enough control of the fonon for that accursed machine to make use of him!

"For now, yes, but he needs to accept what he is, and while he is sleeping he isn't gathering… Or is he?" Lorelei looked at Van questioningly. "What is your name?"

"Van Gra-Vandesdelca Musto Fende. The one who would seize glory." Why was Lorelei asking?

"Hmm." Lorelei closed his eyes, looking as tired as Luke, only without Luke's peacefulness. "What would I do if… Vandesdelca, do you wish to live on in Eldrant? To be Luke's beloved Master Van, and only that? To be forgiven and believe yourself forgiven?"

"He has that power?" To convert originals into replicas without the need to construct a second body, yes, but stripping Van of his guilt? Tampering with his mind like that. "Ah. Your power _is _akin to the Score, after all," Van murmured to Luke.

"You would be happy." There was a hint of longing in Lorelei's voice, as though he wished Van would choose that fate but knew better. He knew Van wanted to die, he knew Van couldn't stand the thought of being tampered with or controlled even if Luke's only goal was to give Van the life he should have had, if he had been free of the Score. Free to be the good man he was, despite everything. "He does love you. Even if you were lying, the memories the two of you made are real."

That was the secret to acting, after all. To pretend that he was Master Van, to pretend that it was real. To be in character as Luke's patient teacher, the one who encouraged him and scolded him because he knew Luke had it in him to do well.

At fighting and at being? "He could hardly do worse than you." And Van would control Luke's heart. As long as he did that, there was no need to fear Luke's power. The boy would never want to hurt anyone, would never think of rebelling. "Is his power affecting my mind? Yes, that's why you asked who I thought I was, wasn't it?"

"He is hope," Lorelei said simply, stroking Luke's hair. "I hope that you can find it in yourself to believe in that. To believe in him."

Lorelei hoped that Van would choose to be Luke's instead of his. Lorelei didn't want Van to die.

Lorelei smiled down at Luke, happy the child was here and on the verge of tears because he knew what loneliness was. Lorelei's greatest wish now was to die alone. For his children to live.

"No," Van said finally. "No. The new world should remain pure." Someone who would condemn millions to death would only taint it.


	8. From Grace

_Ten points total to anyone who can figure out what pisses Luke off_ epically _and what Guy notices about someone else before the additional hint at the end of the chapter. Three points each afterwards._

* * *

Luke woke to a feeling of bright warmth and the knowledge that someone with him. For some reason, that sensation automatically meant, _Asch?_

He snuggled closer, relieved that Asch was okay, here, and not aware of why until he felt lips brush his forehead. _**Good morning, little world. **_

What? "Lorelei?" Startled, he felt himself automatically try to flap his wings to move backwards and away, automatically gathering fonons to make wings when he didn't have any. "What did you do to me?" Why did he have these instincts and fears, why…

Lorelei looked sad to be accused, but there was no resentment or outrage there. This accusation might be false, but most of the time, yes, he had done things to people. He was forcing them to feel certain ways.

He did deserve Legretta's hatred, after all. "Vandesdelca's hymn made us… merge, somewhat. As Asch would merge with you if he was made a replica. You are yourself now, but still… mingled, around the edges."

"So Jade was right, this is your phobia?"

Luke could feel Lorelei reaching to know, or remember, what he was talking about. "Of the miasma, of… Yes. Although I wouldn't call it a phobia. A phobia is an irrational fear." This was knowledge of that the miasma was, of what it not just could but _would _do. "The Score is my memory, and I remember my death. I remember sinking into the miasma, so very slowly. Feeling it…" Feeling all the survivors die, feeling himself be eaten by it inch by inch, until there was nothing but screaming madness and finally, finally, merciful death. "You don't need to fear the miasma, Vandesdelca's machines will destroy it." He reached up to Luke, offering him a place to perch, promising that Luke would be safe if he returned to his arms.

It took a minute to see that Lorelei himself was seated in midair, since his robes pooled around him as though they were resting on a bench. "Along with everything else… What did you do to Asch's body?" Lorelei didn't look like him at all.

"Do?" Lorelei looked surprised. "Legretta insisted I take off his weapons and armor. I am a prisoner, after all."

"As though that would stop you." Like taking away any sword but the Key made a real difference to Lorelei's power. He could just materialize a sword, Luke knew that much.

"It's symbolic, but symbols matter." It hadn't made her feel better, but refusing, reminding her that nothing she could do would make any difference would have made it much worse. "This is how I was depicted in some old book the Order has, apparently. Artistic license." What he'd worn traveling with Julia was far more practical, but white and black travel garb was hardly befitting a sentience. Not to mention that it had been Legretta's intent to embarrass him, or part of it. To remind Van of what he was, so that the man she couldn't help but love would stop showing rare kindness to the entity she deserved to hate. "What Asch wore made his hair look darker: it picked up the blood-red hue. Wearing white made your own hair seem lighter, and this…" Flowing red-gold silk that caught the light, seeming to glow, gave that same quality to the hair that had been Asch's. "The other reason is the reason that you and Asch don't look much alike to those who know you both. The bodies may be the same, but not how you carry yourselves. The lines on your faces. Your eyes."

Asch's had been angry, Luke's full of honest, ever-changing emotions and Lorelei was full of a quiet sadness.

The same face, but very different people.

Entities.

"So she put you in a dress," and that was all it was? At least Luke could still get Asch's body back intact, as soon as he figured out _something_. Wait. "Where's Asch? He was here a moment ago."

Lorelei looked at him quizzically, then frowned. "He wasn't."

"I know he was, I felt him."

"Are you sure you didn't simply sense the presence of an isofon?"

"No, I know what your headaches feel like. This was…" Luke found himself reaching to hand the memory/concept to Lorelei, not for lack of words but because sharing memories like that was as natural a way to explain things as words.

Ah. "You grew up together with Asch. That's what you felt."

"Grew up with him?" What was Lorelei talking about? Luke hadn't been made until Asch was ten, and they certainly hadn't played together as kids. Unless you counted Asch's idea of 'playing' back when he hadn't been very nice at all.

"The potential of you existed within him until you were made, and you _are _potential. For the first ten years of your existence you were tangled together. So, when you sensed another mind holding yours, you assumed it was Asch."

"But…" How could he? When he'd promised Asch that Asch was irreplaceable to him, that he wouldn't, couldn't, mistake someone else for Asch, he'd been fooled by Lorelei so easily? When Lorelei hadn't even been trying, the way Van had been trying to trick Asch's family into thinking Luke was Asch?

Asch was finally giving him a chance and he'd already let him down. Broken the promise that was why Asch had decided not to die.

Luke's wings drooped. How could he make this up to Asch?

"You can't," Lorelei said simply, sadly. "You can't make up for what someone else did. This is my fault, not yours. You can't saddle yourself with my guilt: it is mine. You can't be me any more than you could be Asch. The only way forward is to be yourself and live your own life."

"Stop reading my mind!" Luke yelled, wings flaring. He was too busy glaring at Lorelei to notice that Sync had been alerted by the racket and was carefully watching them through a door.

Lorelei sighed. "I don't need to read your mind when your feelings are so clear." He half-smiled. "A fair assumption to make, though." Normally he was reading everyone's minds, since the Score. "Vandesdelca isn't happy that you came to him for safety. He knew better than to go to his own parents for safety. He gave you the illusion of love, so that you could die happily, but he knows what would have happened to you in his place. He was trying to make it clear to you that he didn't love you and you couldn't plead with him for your sake."

"…He was?" That made Luke's eyes open wide in hope and pain, anger utterly forgotten.

"He will speak to you with anger and contempt, if you stay until he returns," Lorelei warned him.

Instead of being heartbroken, that just seemed to confirm Luke's dearest hopes. "…He still thinks I'm worth scolding?"

"Of course." Lorelei hesitated. "There is something I would ask of you, if I had the right to ask you anything and… No. It would be too cruel."

"What?"

"No." Lorelei shook his head. "Go."

"What?"

"Go," Lorelei said again. "Sync and Dist have been working together in order to build a means of trapping you, and Sync is waiting for the replica he sent to fetch Dist."

Luke followed his gaze to the door, and moved further up, away from it. Still, "Where's Asch?"

Lorelei frowned again. "I can't tell." He'd tried to search for him when Luke had thought Asch was here. "That might be because the Score tells me that he is dead, fallen into the miasma with Akzeriuth."

"Fallen into the… Dammit!" Luke cursed and before he could think better of it dived down through the floor. Asch!

He'd dropped him!

"What does he…." _**Luke! The miasma is still poisonous to us! **_Lorelei couldn't control Luke's fonons but he could still control the space and fonons he moved through, grabbing him and pulling him back up.

"I have to save Asch!"

"Luke… he's dead."

"We're the seventh fonon, right? It brings back dead people all the time!" Oh, right. "Is he in the fon belt?"

Lorelei winced. "Luke, it's the seventh fonons in a seventh fonist that return to the fon belt. If Asch had died in a normal way, he would have merged with one of us."

Normal? "What's so special about the miasma, anyway?"

"It is poison," Lorelei said shortly, refusing to tell Luke any more than that.

"So… time. Tear told me that it was rewinding to when people were healthy." Luke realized that he could tell how long it had been. Hours? Normally Tear only had to rewind a minute at most, but he was a sentience, right?

"Luke," Lorelei told him, again, "You can't save Asch. Trying this will use up most of what power you have, and if you do that, then you will be able to save fewer people."

"Can I just gather the miasma fonons that used to be his fonons and change those?" That was what Jade had tried to do, turning what had been Nebilim into Nebilim.

"No."

"Why not? If I could turn originals into replicas without making them different people, the way you're saying I should, then why not Asch?"

"The only fonons you could call back that way would be the fonons you control. In other words _yourself_. Trying to do that would defeat the purpose: he would cease to be an individual. Secondly, this is the miasma." Lorelei shook his head. "Preventing the miasma from taking him is the only safe way."

"Why are you helping me? I thought you didn't want me to try?"

"I don't." It was a waste. "But I don't want you to die, either. Everything will have been for nothing if you die."

"…the miasma can kill me?" What?

Luke realized how weird it was to be surprised by that. Of course the miasma should have been able to kill him. It had killed an entire city. Being run through by a sword enough times, the poison he and Natalia had been given to commit suicide with: all of those should have been able to kill him. So why was he suddenly _surprised_ that something other than stopping Van could seriously hurt him? Especially when he'd already felt that the miasma was a deadly danger because of the leakage of Lorelei's feelings?

"The miasma…" Lorelei clutched a hand over his chest, over his heart. "It is my sin. Not yours."

"A lot of it is. Akzeriuth, ten thousand people!"

"That was my fault-"

"No, mine! If I have free will, then you have to admit it was mine!" Luke didn't know why that was so important. Obviously those people were important. The people he'd wanted to save, like, "I want to save Asch, and I'm going to!" So he dived down again, reaching for the one he'd dropped, trying to catch that moment in his hands like when he'd snatched Asch from Lorelei. Like catching a falling star.

Except it wasn't so much reaching as finding, a place in time defined by the names and titles that were Asch's and the moment of terror he'd felt back then, the terror of the miasma that had sent him to Van. Abandoning Asch and the home Asch had been to him, once upon a time, for his teacher and maker.

The hope of saving Asch for the known deadly danger of Van and Lorelei.

He'd really, really messed up.

And someone had fallen into the miasma and died because of it. Because he trusted Van. Again.

He wanted Asch to call him stupid dreck. For one thing, he really deserved it.

_The desecrated alter, that which cannot be saved, that which was abandoned, that which died unjustly… _

So many moments, and this wasn't his spacetime, his world, and Asch wasn't really his. He was just glad he could undo failing Asch.

There was no way to undo Akzeriuth… or was there? He didn't have enough power, but he couldn't just give up like that. Give up on saving people, on fixing things?

_There_.

Grabbing Asch again, he aimed for Tear. As a powerful seventh fonist, she had the loudest frequency/song of all the people he knew. Except Van, of course. And Asch and Lorelei, but they had his song so it didn't really count.

Tear was easy to find. Why had Asch been so hard? Lorelei should have been able to find him, especially since the Score said Asch should be in the miasma and Asch had been in the miasma. So he should have been back in the fate the Score decreed for him, right? That should mean that Lorelei would know exactly where he was and what he was doing.

What was Lorelei up to? Luke wondered that with a corner of his mind as he moved into the space-where-Tear-was and knew that Dist was haranguing him for letting Luke escape when Dist wanted to use Luke to bring Nebilim back from the fon belt since Lorelei couldn't, not without the Hymn and Van wouldn't use it for that unless Dist held up his end of the bargain first.

Wait, Lorelei was blocking him, so how did he know…

Dist.

Hovering over the field of selenias, Luke's arms grew slack and Asch decided that it was better to jump down than be dropped. Again. "That, that…. Cockroach! Disgusting piece of… Vermin! I'm going to smash him flat with his own boots! How could he?"

His voice had grown louder and louder, the echoes infused with the power of his frequency marred with a crackling that betrayed his rage and the disharmony it threw his spirit into. Not that he knew that, or was paying attention. "_How could he?" _he demanded, with spirit as well as voice, and already knew.

But that was no excuse, dammit! "Four? He's on his_ fourth_ and there's a fifth waiting already, it's on automatic and I'll kill him! I'll kill him with hyperresonance and overwrite his filthy soul and turn it into weeds and feed it toThing!" The selenias beneath him were growing into a thicket, up to Tear and Asch's waists already, vines trailing up the walls, full to bursting from all the power they were soaking up.

Guy had come running at the sound of Luke's voice, but trying to chop a path through the selenias was getting nowhere, even using every ounce of the Sigmund style's speed. Tear was busy fending off the selenias, which had always liked her but were suddenly especially affectionate. Jade pushed Guy aside only to remember that selenias ate fonons a second after beginning to cast a fire arte and being pounced almost as eagerly as Tear. Asch was the only one in the chamber who could move freely without being drowned in vines, and he stood there staring up at Luke, seeming to be in some calm valley between strangling the idiot replica and banging his head against the wall. No, both their heads.

Anise and Ion, looking through a window on the second story, were the only ones with a clear view of the moment when he got fed up, lunged upwards fifteen feet, and ran the idiot replica through.

It seemed as though all of them were struck deaf for a few seconds as Luke hung there.

Then, in the same instant, his wings disappeared, his body dropped, and every selenia died. As Asch dropped to the ground in a crouch, landing on Luke's chest to retrieve his sword, they withered and rotted into slimy muck in a way that could only be described with an analogy to time-lapse photography. So, to the onlookers, it was indescribable.

Asch took Luke's Soul Crush from its sheath and stalked towards the door into Tear's house.

"What the hell?" Guy demanded as Jade and Tear tried to push the gunk off them and get to their feet. He honestly hadn't intended to attack but some instinct, coupled with trained reflex, had his sword out of his sheath and slashing forward before he was done speaking.

Asch's sword – and Guy knew it wasn't the one Luke had given him – blocked Guy's as the other slashed at his legs. Guy managed to jump back, but stood in a guard position after automatically resheathing his sword, stunned. Asch might be ambidextrous, but that was _not _the same as being able to dual wield. The Sigmund style contained a few moves like that, but the closest the Albert style came was concentrating fonons in the free hand for the style's signature disarming move.

That was when Guy returned his hand to the hilt of his sword, readying himself for another slash, and realized that _it wasn't there_.

He spent a moment grasping at empty air before another sword came to his hand.

Or rather, ran it through, pinning him to the door and slamming it in Ion's face.

The sword Luke had given Asch.

Guy looked back up at Asch's face and his eyes widened. Since when had Asch had…

Tear's Force Field went up an instant too late, and Jade realized that with Luke too distracted to manage their supplies he had just used the last life bottle.

* * *

_Additional hint: bonus bosses._

_Answer:_

_There is one, and only one, means of cheating death in the Tales of the Abyss 'verse. Dist's entire motivation is that he's in favor of it. The party encounters replicas of the others in Dist's very-well-hidden lab, safely behind lots of thick, respawning walls and well-guarded._

_Why isn't there a Dist replica? The most likely explanation is that _he's using it_._

_An enemy with reason to have a grudge against Lorelei and those connected to it that weilds multiple swords. Hmm…_


	9. In Love

_It's looking like the fic will have 16 or 17 chapters, by the way. It's being much more annoying than I thought it would be: I started posting this thing even though it wasn't complete because I thought it would wrap up in only a few chapters. Nope, it's going to end up almost three times the length of what I had written when I started posting it. Although some of that is certain people's fault for insisting on angsty character development._

_If you like Peony/Jade, I should be posting one of those within twenty-four hours, for the person who won the help_Japan auction. _

* * *

After Force Field went up, Asch stabbed Guy's body several more times before seeming to realize that it wasn't working. He growled in annoyance and then turned to look at them. At Tear.

Holding her eyes he smirked and held one hand above the other, focusing. A glyph appeared on the dead ground beneath them, encompassing the entire area.

"What, horns?" Luke had a sinking feeling in his stomach, because he knew that he must have screwed up somehow, very badly, because this was, "The Sword Dancer?"

"That weird ghost?" Since the glyph didn't seem to be doing anything, Anise jumped down out of the window to join them.

"Ghost?" Tear whispered, or almost whimpered. _No, _she told herself, _calm down, Tear. What would Major Legretta think?_

_That I'm a fool for fighting Van… but besides that_. _I've fought this before, I can kill it… Drive it away again_.

It came back. It wouldn't stay dead. Tear wasn't afraid of anything but ghosts and people laughing at her.

The things she couldn't kill. That would come back again and again, or keep doing it again and again, with such malice, such cruelty, such _evil_. Wanting to watch her suffer. Wanting to make her curl up and die, or scream and die. Both painfully.

Jealousy and hatred.

Its eyes made her skin crawl, the _hatred _there, how much it was looking forward to tearing her apart, _especially_ her, now that it knew how she was. "_Daughter of Yulia_."

"Éclair des larmes!" she called in defiance of it, of her fear.

And nothing happened.

"_You'll die in front of him. Perfect. Except…_" it scowled. "_You are him, and yet you're not. It won't be the same._" The combination of hatred and pouting was very Asch. Even though this wasn't Asch. "_If I kill you now, Lorelei won't be watching_."

Guy's body continued to bleed out on the ground behind it, as it drew and readied his sword as well.

"Tear, cast resurrection!" Jade ordered, frustrated with her. She should have known that reviving the dead was the first priority instead of striking out in panic like a cornered rat. Intellectually he knew that emotions turned off the brains of everyone around him, but why they have to be so irritating and counterproductive about it? Reviving Guy would have given her a meat shield between her and the nasty ghost.

She gulped, the voice of command straightening her spine. "Understood." They'd keep it away while she was casting, right?

Luke, and Jade, and…

Anise was shaking Tokunaga in frustration. "Come on, work! Stupid Dist! Nobody better have messed with my Tokunaga!" It was still doll-sized, no matter what she did it wouldn't get big.

Her outburst made it turn its eyes to her. Since it stood near the door and she had just jumped down from the house, she was the closest target to it, and yet it turned away again, disregarding her, and took a step towards Tear.

Then it paused. Turned back, and seemed almost to study her. No fool, she started to run towards the others.

"_You _are_," _it decided, both pleased that it had spotted something and displeased by its presence.

With two of its arms occupied, it had extra swords.

So it threw one.

Anise cried out as the soul crush hit her in the back and she fell, crashing into Tear's legs. It took every ounce of discipline Tear had to keep casting, because now they really needed Guy and the sooner she got him back, the sooner she could revive Anise.

The sooner a dead body would no longer be _touching _her.

She would have set a personal best time for the casting of Revitalize.

If it had worked.

The first time, it might have been panic and lack of discipline that made the casting fail. This time, she knew that wasn't true. Every fiber of her body had been focused on the arte instead of trying to keep herself from running away. "My seventh fonic artes aren't working!"

"What?" The glyph, Jade realized. He moved back, trying to interpret the symbols, but he'd never seen half of them before. "Energy blast!" Not even third-fonon strike artes? "It's using Asch's power, this is a dual-order hyperresonance! All artes are disabled!"

"G-got it." Tear drew her knives, feeling a lump in her throat. No, she needed to _not _panic, or else it really _was _going to kill her. _Come on, Tear, you've fought this before, you didn't act like this then_.

Yes, this version was a lot scarier, but ghosts were inherently scary. She'd never let mere odds bother her like this before.

This was like Luke, she realized. Suddenly being terrified of something he hadn't been afraid of before. Or, in her case, suddenly going from finding something frightening and not wanting to think about it (so she'd just not thought about it unless inconsiderate people told stories) to an absolute certainty that it had _seen _her and she was going to _die_. Like a rat frozen by the eyes of a snake. At least she was trying to fight, not acting like a dumb animal, even though every instinct she had was screaming at her to _run, _she was _too close_…

The world wobbled around Tear.

She coughed, and it was that hacking that told her that she needed to cover her mouth and run desperately for the bathroom, or behind a bush, or _anything_ so that she could wash her hands and take more medicine.

Get rid of the blood. Pretend that she was alright, that she wasn't dying.

Was her brother going through this too? He'd seemed so strong, so in control, but he _always _seemed that way, he knew better than to show weakness. He'd tried to be strong for her, and she was trying to be strong for him even now.

Not let on that it was tearing her apart inside…

She couldn't stop coughing, she thought, and then a second later realized that she had, but not because she felt better. She couldn't breathe.

"Tear!"

If Luke hadn't caught her she would have fallen over.

"_This won't do." _It had decided to spare her for now, and now she was dying on it? "_Hmm, Lorelei is…_" Its hands separated and it turned its back on them, heading towards the door.

It didn't even need to pause for one of its arms to stab the creature of the seventh fonon ('replica' and 'Ion') on the way.

Ion's hand grabbed the insubstantial arm before it could pull the sword back. It shouldn't have been able to do that, but it was a creature of the seventh fonon ('fon master') and they could do all sorts of unnatural things (like make human life meaningless, but that was nothing new).

Its grip was unusually strong for someone that had just been stabbed through the gut. The seventh fonon didn't kill pain: it made it linger, it knew that. (Replicas were weird about pain and emotions, if the things even felt them.)

It smiled at him, the serene expression in jarring contrast to the ferocity with which it _reached _and _twisted _and _grabbed_ and _held_.

Or perhaps the word was devoured.

So foolish of it, to think this, or anything else, would matter.

"Ion, are you alright?"

"I'm fine, Luke," it answered, smiling, removing its sword from the stomach of its new body. "Did it work?"

"Did what work?" Jade asked as Luke knelt down next to Asch. The former host of both itself and Lorelei had collapsed. The obvious metaphor was 'a puppet with its strings cut,' but it was one of Lorelei's creatures. Only death could free it.

"I was looking for a way to help Tear, and I found fragments of a Daathic Fonic Arte that might have been able to cure miasma poisoning. I wasn't sure, though." (That part was a lie.) "I didn't want to get everyone's hopes up if I wasn't strong enough to cast it."

"Miasma poisoning?" Luke looked up at him, remembering something. "Asch fell into the miasma, is that what did this?"

"That would explain Tear's symptoms." Jade pushed past Luke to search the house. "If either of you can help Tear, ask her where she keeps the medical supplies. Otherwise one of us will have to go buy life bottles."

"Oh, Tear!" Yes, it could definitely gather the miasma in her into itself, and that would keep her alive long enough. Perfect.

Luke grabbed his hand as Ion moved to push by him in the opposite direction. "Are you sure you're up to it, Ion?"

It smiled as it lied. "I'll be fine. Thank you, Luke."

It went against the grain to _help _Yulia's daughter (his rival), but wouldn't it be interesting if it could use Yulia's own Grand Fonic Hymn against their descendants and their plans?

Oh, the _possibilities_. That had to be why it was so easy to hide its rage under this smile. Or perhaps the body had just held this expression so long its face had froze that way.

"Uh…" Her head tossed to the side as she regained consciousness. "Luke?" she asked weakly, barely able to open her eyes.

"It's me."

"Ion?" The seventh fonons in her were helping her recover quickly.

"Can you promise me something?" it asked.

"Um, what?" Her voice was half-groggy, half-surprised. Ion rarely asked anything of anyone, and this was sort of an odd time. She wasn't even sure she would remember it later, and she didn't like the thought of that.

It was sitting by her side and holding her hand as it asked, "Please take care of Luke for me? I know that you can make him happy."

"What… Ion?" Tear might have blushed if she hadn't been so alarmed. Ion was the one who had healed her? Sickly Ion? And those sounded like last words. No, the term was last request.

Concern for him cleared her head enough, made her focused enough that she could open her eyes and focus them well enough to see his face.

See that it was glowing.

As she pushed herself up Ion said that, "I wish I could have done more, but it's Luke, so… I know he'll find a way. But Luke never thinks of himself, so, please, Tear? I could never do much, but someone needs to believe in Luke. Remind him that he's not worthless, no matter what everyone says. He's really kind." Ion would always treasure that day in Cheagle Woods.

'No matter what everyone says.' Those words echoed in Tear's head, bringing up countless painful memories. Countless jeers. Ignorant outerworlder. Stupid, dirty…

Had they been treating Luke like that? Had _she _been treating Luke like that? _She, _who knew how painful it was to be constantly rejected, insulted by the people she'd wanted so much to be friends with. Told that she was bad, that she could never be one of them (and Luke could never make up for Akzeriuth).

She almost wondered if she was having another episode, she felt so sick. But no. This wasn't the miasma. It had all been her.

Ion was dying. She could feel his fonons separating. She could feel that same darkness that had been in Asch inside him, struggling furiously.

Breaking him. Breaking the bonds between his fonons, and repeated casting of Daathic fonic artes had already placed so much strain on them.

"Ion…" You love him, don't you, Tear would have said, if that hadn't been obvious. If only there had been more time. "I will. I promise." Because what else could she say? "I'm sorry." She couldn't take back any of what she had said to Luke. No fonic arte could heal scars made with words. There was nothing she could do to save Ion, either.

He didn't say it was alright, because it wasn't, and if he'd been more in touch with his emotions he would have started hating her months ago. She'd treated Luke's feelings, those of his most precious person, those he'd never dreamed of wishing for, like trash. "Please, make sure to tell Anise to get what's under my mattress. For her parents."

"I will." Now it was her that held his hands.

"Thank you," he said, and smiled as he disappeared into a thousand points of light.

She crouched there, unmoving, hands still there as though his were still there to be held. She wasn't sure how long she'd stayed like that.

When she heard running footsteps behind her, from the house, she knew what they would ask. "Ion is… gone. He took it with him."

"I felt him let go," Luke said, stopping behind her. "I didn't know what he was doing, I was too…" Distracted. Asch. "He let go."

"Let go?" Jade frowned. "What if it just dematerialized?" It was an aggregate of fonons, after all, and wasn't _that _an unpleasant thought.

Luke shook his head. "It's what replicas do when they don't want to live. Van said something about it, but he was wrong."

Ah, in Belkend. "That they disintegrate and their fonons return to the fon belt? He attributed that to Lorelei."

"Not Lorelei." Replicas weren't Lorelei's. "Me. Replicas exist… because they exist. They're made up of memory. There isn't a physical body to tell them to be a certain way, it's just the knowledge in their fonons. It… imposes itself on the fonon. Makes it take a certain shape."

"Replica data." That was the term.

"If they don't want to live, they won't keep living." And so many replicas were treated so cruelly. "That was why Ion could use all those artes, wasn't it."

"Because of you," Tear corrected him, gently.

Luke blinked. "Me? I wasn't doing anything." He hadn't found out how until Ion wasn't needed for the sephiroth anymore.

"It was enough." Her right hand moved, finally, to clasp over her heart as she bowed her head. "More than enough."

"Did Ion's personality go to the fon belt?" Jade knew that what he was _really _asking was, 'did Professor Nebilim's?' Were the legends really true, did they really continue to exist after physical death?

Were they not _gone_ but simply elsewhere? Was it really that simple, had he been right all along? Was it possible to bring her back, to see her again, if not with fomicry than by building an Albiore capable of reaching the fon belt or something?

Or asking Luke?

"I don't know-No. He fell." He'd taken it with him, and it had taken him with it. "When I was trying to fix Asch's memories, I saw that Ion hadn't gotten rid of it, he had just moved it." He'd been so _angry _with Ion, how could he think that was any kind of an improvement? To have to fight it in Ion's body instead of Asch's, when the strain could kill Ion?

"Whose ghost was that? Did you get a name?" Jade asked quickly, to prevent himself or Luke from lingering on the lost.

"Name?" Luke closed his eyes. "Qliphoth?" Was that right? "He wasn't thinking about it while he was in Asch, and he wasn't thinking with Asch's seventh fonons. I'm trying to hear echoes."

For all Jade knew, that could be the name of some ancient general that had fought Yulia, but, "Is it a sentience, of this place, of the miasma?"

"I'm not sure." It wasn't like Luke had felt any other sentiences. "His name is almost exactly the same as Asch's, though. That's why I messed up," he realized. First he'd mistaken Lorelei for Asch and now this thing?

"Qliphoth, Asch: no, I'm not really seeing the resemblance," Jade said dryly.

"No, I meant…"

"Then say what you mean."

"How I know what is Asch and what is something else," Luke tried to explain.

"One is a bloodthirsty demon of vengeance, and the other is a large expanse of poisonous matter." Jade cocked his head to the side. "Quite similar, really, now that I think about it."

Luke glared. "I need to find enough power to rescue Ion before it eats him." And Jade was not helping. "And I need to fix Asch's mind, and…" His shoulder drooped.

"On the positive side, you've been walking on the ground for quite awhile now."

"Gah!" Luke yelled, and backwinged so hard he hit the roof above Tear's garden. "Don't do that?"

"Look on the bright side? Duly noted, Guy."

"Oh no, Guy!" Luke stopped rubbing his head and facepalmed.

"It's ok, I don't think it's been too long," Tear told him. "I'm sorry, I was out here, I should have remembered."

"You were sick, and…"

"I'm a part of this too," Tear told him, and began to cast. _I'm your friend too. Even if I haven't been acting like it. _She should apologize, but later. Once everyone was ok. Once she'd made up for everything.


	10. Angel

_I'm drawing on what the Quiphoth is and the details of the mythology of the sephiroth here. It's an interesting answer to the question of why is there evil? I'm putting it in Buddhist terms a bit, though. Perfection is everything becoming one with the universe, there being only one infinite existence. For that one, infinite existence to create/be replaced by a whole bunch of other existences would require the existence of imperfection. In short: no evil, no life as we know it._

_A gilt Nephilim indeed. Talk about Names To Run Away From Really Fast._

* * *

Why on earth was _Tear _of all people being mushy now? She'd started acting almost as bad as him when it came to her emotions after the fall of Akzeriuth, and she picked now of all times to resume acting like a decent human being? When Jade needed _information_ and that meant he needed Luke too distracted to think about the difficult things, like Tear and _Ion's death_.

Perhaps that was what had knocked some sense into Tear, which was apparently normal, albeit horrible timing. Apparently death normally let people put their lives into perspective and realize the meaning human life had, their own and those of their friends and loved ones.

They didn't have time for this.

If Tear started acting like Luke's friend again now, that meant she would try to comfort him, and Jade couldn't be here for that. That was why he'd left them alone after Akzeriuth even though he'd needed to know what had just happened, because he'd expected that Luke's fiancée, or best friend, or crush, or _someone _would give him a shoulder to cry on, and then Jade could come back and question him after the crying had stopped and Luke could talk about what had happened without spending the entire conversation trying to come to terms with his betrayal by his teacher.

Jade wasn't a compassionate person, but apparently the recommended method was to put oneself in the other individual's shoes. Or position, at least: Luke's shoes wouldn't fit him.

What if Professor Nebilim had known his scored fate all along and just been using him to ensure the creation of replicas? What if she'd seen him as not just a monster, she'd known he was a monster, but a tool she was only tolerating for that purpose? What if she'd deliberately made herself the center of his world, ensured that he would do anything for her (and in fact he would have), all for a single purpose? To ensure that he became the Necromancer, that thousands died, originals and replicas alike, because of his work? That Hod fell, all because of him?

What if, when he succeeded in bringing her back, she didn't want anything to do with him anymore, now that his task was accomplished? What if she told him what she really thought of him, beneath contempt, laughed, and left? Just left him behind after everything he'd been tricked into doing for her? The woman Jade probably would have loved if he weren't a monster, and thank the sentiences he was?

He couldn't stand it.

He couldn't stand the thought.

He couldn't stand the knowledge that god-generals like Nebilim the Golden did not just 'leave' the Order. Especially high-ranking ones. They knew too much. That it only made sense if she'd been there because her score said she would be. Perhaps in order to groom the future emperor.

Perhaps in order to groom _him_.

If replicas really had been Yulia and Lorelei's plan all along, would it have been left to chance? Of course not. Not when the instant replicas began to be made, chance would be introduced: no, they'd have to make sure everything went perfectly up to that point. That the first replica was made in such a way that it would attract the attention of Malkuth's government.

They'd have to ensure that he was _motivated_.

Someone grabbed his arm.

Someone got punched to the ground, but that was when he started paying attention to his ears again and noticed that they'd been saying his name for some time now.

"Jade, are you alright?" Tear asked. "You're trembling."

"I am." How strange. Or maybe not. He was thinking about something he couldn't bear, after all. That Luke hadn't been able to bear. The boy had been trembling on the deck of the Tartarus, when they'd confronted him about what had happened.

Luke pried the fingers of his right hand away from his palm as Guy stood back up. "You're bleeding."

Jade kept his fingernails trimmed professionally short. He was a soldier, after all. How hard had he been clenching his fists, for them to have cut into his palm? How distracted had he been these past few days, how worried had he been, about Peony and two aggravating redheads, to forget to check them, every morning, regular as fontech?

No, no, this was not right. Not at all. He was a monster, and they needed a monster right, now, because all of them were such _children_, and someone needed to be rational, someone needed to be the cool-headed veteran Tear pretended to be, knowing it was what was necessary. They could deal with things like emotions, or rather they could _not _deal with them, not think of certain terrible truths and just go back to their lives, after Van was dead and Luke, Guy and Tear no longer had to have it rubbed in their faces that he was a murderer. After Dist was finally squashed like the cockroach he was (Luke would do it, too) and stopped stirring up precious memories, stopped making Jade think about those days, stopped _defiling _them. Because Jade didn't _want _to face facts, Celsius take him.

Celsius take them all. No, _Efreet_.

He forcefully relaxed his other hand and said nothing as Luke healed the cuts with a probably-instinctive brush of fonons. Well. At least the fact they were looking at him as though he was one of Dist's creations that could explode at any moment if they didn't tread carefully meant they weren't thinking about Ion. Or Van. Or the Order, and its god-generals.

Like Ne-

No.

Calm. Rational. Even if there were things like this, where if he was rational about them there was no way to stay calm.

He was learning too much from watching Luke. Why had he ever wanted to learn how to be human? Now was _not _the time.

For Nephry's sake and Peony's, that was why. And they were why he needed to be Jade Balfour, Jade Curtiss, the golden child and Necromancer now more than ever.

"Did sealing it seal the miasma?" he asked Luke.

"Seal the miasma?"

Guy hurried to explain: Jade didn't even need to prompt him. "The night you disappeared, the whole world was covered in miasma. The world leaders came here, to Yulia City, to try to figure out what we're going to do. Is there some way to reinforce the seal, or lower it, or..."

Luke looked at him helplessly. How would he know? Still, he closed his eyes, trying. "Lorelei said that Van's plan would get rid of the miasma… After stirring it up."

"What about Dist?" Jade asked. Did he know the details? Because if Dist really was inhabiting a replica body now, Luke might be able to use him as well as Sync to find out what he knew and Van had planned. Unless Lorelei had warned Van of that possibility, and he was keeping the technical details secret from them. Probably wise, since Dist was treacherous and Sync simply had no need to know.

"The miasma is the leftovers. That's why it has the same name as Asch. The more seventh fonon gets made, the more miasma there is. It's… the leftovers, from when Lorelei made the world. Turned into the world, I guess. When Lorelei was reawakened, when they started making more seventh fonon, the world began to shake apart. Everything was in balance when Lorelei made it, and there was only a little miasma, but turning fonons, pieces of Lorelei, back into Lorelei made everything out of wack. That's happening now, as they make more seventh fonons in order to make, well, me. If Asch isn't destroyed, he'll be the same as the miasma. I mean, he is to me and Eldrant what the miasma is to Lorelei. If he stays in the new world, he'll poison me. That's why his name is the same." Luke didn't think of how cruel to Asch it was to say things like that. Luke's mind was occupied with Dist, and the concepts, and in Luke's world, people said cruel things all the time and ignored the feelings of other people. Most of the time, Luke tried not to treat other people how they treated him, but right now it felt like he was talking about himself.

Dist was good at understanding things, as long as they were theory instead of people. Luke wondered what it would be like if Jade were in a replica body. To be able to figure things out with that mind.

"So the miasma is a dark mirror of Lorelei, as ancient as he is?" Somehow, Jade doubted that.

"No, it came into existence with the other fonon sentiences. And everything else. When there was only Lorelei, there was only harmony. There was only one time, space, person, everything was perfect. For the world to exist, things had to no longer be that way. Lorelei had to split apart, things had to be messed up. Many imperfect things instead of one perfect thing." Luke tilted his head. "From what's inside Asch… I don't think it really has a single mind. There are so many spirits there, and they all want… It's a chorus of angry voices that just sound like one voice. It can't be a single being in harmony, or it would be Lorelei. That's why Lorelei can't do anything about it!" Luke realized. "For the world to exist, Lorelei had to not be all-powerful. So it is what he can't do anything about. It's his powerlessness."

Tear spoke up. "A price he had to pay, what he had to give up, in order to give the world freedom, instead of it simply being part of him." Instead of being eternally alone. "That's what evil is. That's the order's doctrine. Why does evil exist, when Yulia and Lorelei created the best possible future for us? Evil is that which isn't in the score, that which rebels against the Score. All they can do is imprison it, limit it." Like the miasma. The Score had been made to find a way to save the world from the miasma, keep it from eating all of them. "In her journals…" So much in there that Tear hadn't wanted to understand, because it was borderline heresy. So many pages torn out, and she could guess at what had happened to them. That they had contained heresy, devastating truths instead of uncomfortable ones.

"Do you have access to Professor Nebilim's mind? Probably not, she wasn't created with the seventh fonon." Jade had asked that while he was _not thinking_ about the past, except for relevant details like the fact she had (supposedly?) been sent to study the planetary fonic arte and the sentience of the planet was Lorelei, so she might know something.

"You did rebuild her, and she did contain the seventh fonon, so…" Luke focused, and then?

Luke had been able to maintain the act of a normal, everyday spoiled noble brat, trying to be what they'd expected him to be, as close as he could be to what they wanted. Then that mask had been shattered, and Luke was no good at lying. Luke couldn't act. When something struck a nerve?

Jade tried to find an alternate explanation for why Luke's wings flared, why he looked so devastated, like he wanted to curl up, and didn't, couldn't meet Jade's eyes.

It said something when one of those less-heartbreaking alternatives that his desperate mind tossed up was that Luke didn't want to tell him that Jade had accidently destroyed his teacher's soul.

No, Luke hated death, but if Nebilim had ceased to exist Luke wouldn't have wanted to say it, but he would have desperately tried to change the subject or something.

There was really only one thing that would cut Luke to the bone like this. There was only one thing that ever had.

It was one thing for a loved one to die. What Van had done was something else entirely.

What Nebilim had done. There really was no doubt, was there? If only he was illogical enough to retreat into denial the way Luke had tried to, that terrible day on the Tartarus. If only their teachers, their mentors, the ones who believed in them, truly had.


	11. Snow

_My apologies for the filler. It does serve several purposes, I swear. The story will be complete at 16 chapters, if anyone's interested._

* * *

Yulia City was a ghost town now.

The children that had made Tear's childhood miserable were dead or dying somewhere amid the rows of cots in the makeshift hospital. There was nothing anyone could do for replica data extraction, or miasma poisoning.

Perhaps that was why Yulia City had been one of Van's first targets. He must have known that the miasma would rise again and Yulia City, with its air filters, would be the only sanctuary from it. It could have partially been a warning not to flee there, because what Van targeted once he could target again.

Until Luke escaped, at least.

Her brother had done this.

No, that wasn't what truly scared her about it. _Lorelei _had done this.

She'd awakened to her powers as a seventh fonist at a young age, and she'd been very sensitive to the fonon. She was one of Yulia's heirs, of course she was. That was why she'd believed in Mohs and been a member of the Grand Maestro faction: of course following the Score was for the best. Of course it was true that it was the path to the happiest future. Because that was why Yulia and Lorelei had created it, for everyone's sake. Tear had read Yulia's journals. She'd felt Lorelei's love for this world.

She'd known that her brother loved her, and perhaps some of what she'd felt when she overheard him and Legretta had been betrayal, that he would plot something like this without her. Her big brother and Major Legretta, her only real friends. The closest she'd had to parents, growing up.

She'd thought that it was her scored fate go join the Order and help them, despite all the hints that Van didn't want her to join the order. She'd thought that Van and Legretta might get married someday.

And Luke had thought that Van loved him too, and would help Luke become a hero so Luke could be free and live in Daath with him.

Except none of it was going to happen.

She was walking through an empty city because a messenger had come to tell her that Mayor Teodoro wouldn't last much longer.

She didn't want to be there when he died.

She had to.

It would be a comfort to him, even if a selfish part of her didn't _want _to comfort him, and once he died she was going to be the next Mayor. Everything had to be done properly when it came to responsibilities like that, she'd learned that from her brother and Major Legretta.

Perhaps her grandfather was keeping still more secrets, too. Perhaps he'd finally tell her them on his deathbed. That was why she was going alone, even though Luke wanted to come with her. Luke wouldn't understand. Luke would want to help her cry, the way he needed help to cry, someone to hold him and say that it was alright, and it made her a horrible granddaughter but she wasn't going to cry.

Not for him.

The wetness she wiped from the corner of her eye as she walked through the Great Hall wasn't for Teodoro. It was for her brother. Maybe it was for herself.

It was really hypocritical of her, wasn't it? To blame Teodoro for not turning against the Score earlier, when it had taken so much for her to see that it was necessary. Except what he'd seen, what he'd known, should have been enough. It was also hypocritical that she wasn't this angry with King Ingobert or Duke Fabre, when they'd done the exact same thing.

Luke was Luke, just such a well-meaning _idiot _and it had been wrong to use him like that, but Van was _her brother_.

Luke thought that she was a good person. Luke was looking to her to judge him on how he was doing, trying to grow up. She'd needed to be strong for him. Luke shouldn't know that if Van had told her the truth earlier she might have joined him, and she bet Guy felt the same way. Luke shouldn't know that the reason her voice trembled a bit when the messenger came was that she was so _angry_.

The teasing had forced her to learn how to hide her reactions, because when they saw that they'd gotten to her they did more of it. As she calmly walked through empty, familiar halls, face wearing the mask of a perfect soldier, a responsible future ruler, she was furious. It was incredibly petty to be angry at Teodoro for dying now, when she needed to be there with Luke and the others, when someone needed to hold things together. When she'd _made a promise _to Ion. Yet here she was, having to put Teodoro, who had let Van be used, who had let Van go into the miasma, breathing in that poison as a child because he hadn't cared about him, above Ion.

He really hadn't cared at all, had he, except for how Van was useful. His only _real _grandchild had been Tear.

In hindsight, it was all so clear, and it made her want to stab something.

She and Van were the heirs of Yulia.

Yulia who had done this to Van, just like Teodoro. How could she? How could anyone? Condemning him like this…

Tear's hands did not clench into fists. She had better self-control than that.

Tear had thought she'd inherited a grand legacy. She'd protect the world and help people be happy, just like her big brother. What she'd learned, what all of this had forced her to realize?

She'd been hiding from the truth. The truth that she didn't have any idea how to help Luke. How could anyone replace Van? The truth that she was just as guilty as Luke was, of everything that had happened.

No, more. She'd inherited Yulia's guilt. As Van's sister, it was her duty to make up for all of this.

How dare he.

How dare Van try to let her be _innocent_. Be _happy_. How dare he keep all of this from her, let everything crash down on her at once? It was such _selfishness_! She'd been so blind, and it was his fault, his fault she'd been one of the Score's blind followers. His fault she'd been what he hated.

To tell the truth, maybe it wasn't Teodoro she was angry with at all.

She hated Yulia City.

She could understand why her brother hated the world.

But because of him, she couldn't. She didn't have that option. She had to be the good one. She had to take responsibility for Yulia's City and Yulia's Score. No, more than that.

The Fon Master was dead. No replacement Fon Master had been born. Someone had to take control of the Order of Lorelei. The proof of a Fon Master was their ability to read even the most hidden of Scores.

The way Yulia's descendants could.

The Order of Lorelei had been founded by Daath, a traitor. Maybe he'd found out about Eldrant, the truth behind the promised land of Ispanian myth, and that was why he'd betrayed Yulia? No, that was probably too much to hope for. Any warnings he'd tried to leave behind for the future would surely have been destroyed by now.

The Order kept its secrets well. Her family kept its secrets well. Still, as the mayor, as the Fon Master, there might be something she could do.

There had to be something she could do.

Even if she couldn't sing the Grand Fonic Hymn. Even if she never could sing the Grand Fonic Hymn, because now that she knew the truth behind that pact she didn't know if she could ever understand the feelings behind it. She didn't think that she _wanted _to understand the feelings behind something that terrible. She wanted to try to refuse responsibility the way Luke had after Akzeriuth.

Except she knew it didn't work that way.

The essence of the fifth hymn was 'destroy everything.' The essence of the seventh was enslavement. She didn't want to know any more than this. She didn't want to have all those nights Van had sung her to sleep ruined by the knowledge of what he'd truly been singing. How cursed, how poisoned, everything had been all along.

Hadn't she learned from Akzeriuth that trying to protect a child's innocence, wanting to give Van the benefit of the doubt got people killed? He had to be stopped, _Lorelei _had to be stopped, _Yulia _had to be stopped.

She had to stop them.

No matter what.

Except she'd made a promise to Ion. She owed Ion her life and this chance to try to make things right, and if she put a stop to Van and Yulia's plans Luke would die.

She didn't want him to die.

_Could _this world be saved? A world that was rotten at the core, rotten to the core? Filled with lies and the miasma's poison? Was Van right? Were Yulia and Lorelei right? Had Teodoro been right, to let their parents let Van be used to destroy Hod? She knew enough to know that if Hod and Akzeriuth hadn't been destroyed, taking the Albertesque seal with them, it wouldn't have been possible to lower the land. To create Eldrant.

If Van hadn't destroyed Hod, Luke might never have existed, if he really was potential. If Teodoro had save Van, then…

When it was just a matter of following the Score, everything was so simple. When it was just a matter of being like her big brother and Legretta, all she'd needed to do in order to know what to do? She'd just had to think of what they would do. It had all been so simple. She hadn't had to think. She wasn't Jade: all of this made her head hurt. But her ancestress had understood it, so Tear had to. No, Tear _would_.

It had just been playtime, all along. Her brother hadn't wanted her to join the Order. Legretta had really just been babysitting her. Van had taught her to cook just to spend time with her, not in case they got separated on the battlefield. He really had loved her.

Her parents had died trying to get her, not Van, to safety. They really had loved her.

Teodoro loved her.

They'd loved her, they'd suffocated her with it, and all the while Van and Luke had been left out in the cold and how was she supposed to fix any of this? She couldn't go back in time and make things right for Van, or Luke.

She just had to put one foot in front of the other. Like Luke. Had to let the doctor tell her how badly Teodoro was doing in a hushed voice and nod like she was using stoic determination to cover proper grief for the proper person. She had to sit by his bedside and take his hand, let him whisper in a scratchy voice, "Is that you, Mystearica?"

Actually, she didn't like the nickname Tear. The other kids had called her that because she'd cried when they'd picked on her. Well, she'd stopped that. Eventually. She wasn't that weak anymore.

Mystearica was what her brother had called her.

She still had to answer, "Yes, I'm here," and let him make his apologies as though they made any more difference than Luke trying to apologize for Akzeriuth. When he should be making them to Van, not her. Except Van wasn't here to hear them and he wouldn't want to hear them.

She knew better than to relay them, not when what Teodoro was really saying was, "I had to, it was in the Score, so it wasn't really my fault," and that was no excuse. Not now, not ever. She knew that now.

Still, it would be cold to deny this comfort to a dying man.

So Mystearica Aura Fende, daughter of Yulia, the next mayor of Yulia City, sat there, listening the way she hadn't listened to Luke, comforting him the way she hadn't comforted her friend. She sat in judgment, a perfect marble statue, and her heart was as ice.

Perhaps she could understand it after all. Wanting to smash everything and just start over.

* * *

_"Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice…" – Robert Frost._

_If this were the game, you'd get this status message:_

Tear has learned Niflheim.


	12. Ill

_The fic is finally complete at 16 chapters. I thought it would be simple to finish, but it turned out to be a bear... As I believe I said before in the ANs for another ToA fic on the site, I have no idea where this Lorelei muse came from. _

* * *

"I can keep it out. For now, at least." The windows and doors of this base were far from airtight, so the fact the air in this room was clear proved that Lorelei spoke the truth.

Van almost asked why Lorelei would bother. Everyone here had either accepted that they would be dying for the sake of the new world or, like Dist, had a replacement body waiting. From his experience, a little miasma wouldn't affect their ability to perform enough to matter, not when there was so little time remaining.

Then he remembered that unlike him, most of those here had either had their replica data extracted, which weakened their bodies and left them vulnerable to the miasma, or simply weren't as powerful a seventh fonist as he was. He'd probably absorbed enough miasma to kill a normal human several times over, searching for survivors after the fall of Hod. Not to mention operating the passage rings.

No: it would be inconvenient if his troops started to die now. Most of them had replicas among the guards of Feres, but it would take a few precious days for the Big Bang Effect to let them take control of the programmed bodies, leaving him without their expertise.

It would be difficult for Malkuth, which had more of an army left, to launch an assault against Feres: losing both Hod and Sheridan had cost them their navy, and it would be difficult to coordinate the use of Kimlasca's landships. And that was _if _anyone had the presence of mind to use their hyperresonance detectors to discover where Luke had kept vanishing to and from. Even if they did, Feres was already a reasonable distance from its previous location.

Of course, soon the location of their new base would be obvious. To those few left to look up and see it.

"'For now' is all we need." After all, the core of Eldrant would float where Hod once had, where it had been on the surface of the Outer Lands before it was destroyed and the rest of the Outer Lands were lowered. "If I may ask, where is the Score still being read?" Had Peony and Ingobert actually been able to forbid it in their lands? The idea was ridiculous. If Lorelei hadn't made it unnecessary, Van would have sent Sync to join the other Scorers, some real, some mere charlatans milking the Score's cattle, to gather enough replica data for a sustainable population. His ancestress had been a 'scientist' and had made a point in her notes about the need for a large gene pool as opposed to just creating enough warm bodies, among all the other details necessary in order for Eldrant to succeed.

Of course, it was quite hypocritical for Yulia to warn of the dangers of inbreeding when there were several reasons she had so few descendants. Hod's Fende family, concealed as mere servants of House Gardios, and Yulia City's ruling Grants line were not so much a family tree as a family ladder, constantly intermarrying and thus preserving the power and the blood of Yulia. After all, the more similar they were to Yulia, the easier it would be for them to think like her and use her hymns.

Mystearica's resemblance to Yulia would have been astonishing if he hadn't known better than to think coincidences existed in this Scored world.

He had to wonder: was it simply Yulia's blood and power that her descendants had been bred to keep intact, or something else?

He could guess at the answer, but he didn't want to know.

"Daath missed the last service." Everyone was surprised at that, not just Lorelei. Surely Mohs would have found _someone _to do it. He had that spare Ion replica, after all. Even if a mob overran the cathedral, he still had plenty of fonstones hidden away.

Van smiled: perhaps an accident had befallen the Grand Maestro. Such a pity.

"Legretta," he said, turning to the woman he had read of in the seventh fonstone long before he met her. He was Scored to have an affair with her until she carried out her plan to murder him in their bed. Her son would have been put up for adoption, and with all the records destroyed in the plague, no one would have known to keep him from marrying Mystearica's daughter. Normally that was a little too close a relationship even for their family, but Teodoro had only had one daughter, all the other Fendes had died with Hod, and there was no one else to carry on the family line. And with Mystearica scored to marry Mohs, who wasn't even a seventh fonist? Drastic times called for drastic measures, and how more drastic a time could there be than the end of the world?

Even knowing all of this, even though he had been the one to send her brother to die as the Score decreed, Legretta still couldn't control her feelings. She still loved him, even though he'd been as cold to her as he could and maintain a working partnership. "Yes, Commandant?" Normally Legretta's reserve was impeccable, but there was always something brittle about her when she was in the same room as Lorelei, as thought she was trying to restrain a shudder. Everyone here knew the cruelty and inhumanity of the Score, but Legretta knew better than anyone here but him just how insidious it could be, how tightly it gripped the minds of everyone on Auldrant. How laughable the idea of winning free of it really was, as long as it existed.

"How long until the replication machines are fully operational?" The lift fontech machines were already ready to go, but until the replication machines were ready there was no point. Eldrant's defenses would need replicated ammunition, for one thing. It would be foolish to tip their hand too soon, and once Eldrant rose, soon it would engulf Yulia City. Then, the only place on Auldrant free of the miasma would be Eldrant itself, and surely desperate nobles and Maestros would try to flee there, even though that would be certain death.

"Forty-six hours, Commandant."

Not bad, but they were so close: he was growing impatient. Looking at Dist, he said, "I assume you could cut, oh, perhaps as much as ten hours off that time?"

"Only ten?" Dist started to sputter when Van cut him off.

"Lorelei. Once Eldrant is airborne, I assume you can bring Nebilim back from the dead?"

"With your help." If Van sang the Grand Fonic Hymn and commanded him to. Otherwise, he wouldn't be able to bring back someone scored to die so long ago.

Van turned back to Dist. "The sooner preparations are complete, the sooner you will be reunited with your teacher." And the sooner Van would have a sixth god-general under his command again. He'd never met Nephilim the Golden, but the assistance of such a learned fonologist would surely be useful.

And if she didn't believe in Eldrant, and replicas, she wouldn't have given her life in order to ensure all of this played out properly. There were only passing allusions in Yulia's notes to the Planetary Fonic Arte: he didn't know what it was, and he was almost certain it was too late for anything to stop him, let alone some arte no living soul could cast, but he'd rather be sure.

Perhaps Gelda could even keep her wayward student in line. He would have had Lorelei bring her back right away, just in the hope that would make Dist reliable for once, except the risk that Dist would get his foolish little heart broken and see reason for once in his life had been unacceptable. Very unlikely, there were none so blind as those who would not see, but the last thing he'd needed would have been the man who understand more about his plans than anyone but himself defecting to join 'dear Jade,' and try to save the life of the closest thing he probably had to a friend, as pathetic as that was.

Sync had been dispatched to obtain intelligence on Daath, after Lorelei had told Van about that little scheme he'd cooked up with Dist. Something would have to be done to ensure that Luke, Lorelei's replacement couldn't be bound the way Lorelei had, but only _after _Eldrant had safely replaced Auldrant and its survival was assured.

Once he'd solved that problem, _then _he could rest.

No rest for the wicked.

Largo could be relied on to stay at his post, and Arietta could look after herself. Even if Luke was able to use his powers to capture her, he wouldn't be able to find out anything useful from interrogating her. It would be too late by that point.

Since the current Fon Master Ion was both unreliable and surely falling apart by now, he might have to make Arietta a new one. Perhaps he should tell Sync to capture that one Mohs thought Van didn't know about. It was a pity the original Fon Master Ion wouldn't be able to see this new world, but he'd promised to look after Arietta. Save for Gailardia, who was his lord, not a friend, Ion was probably the closest thing he'd ever had to one. Without his support early on, he never would have gotten this far.

_They _would never have gotten this far.

Tuning out Dist's thanks, which had swiftly turned into random babble, he let his eyes sweep over the room. Time for an inspiring speech, not that they needed it. It was inspiring enough to have come this far, to be this close to ending the Score's tyranny and saving Auldrant from its Scored Downfall. From the wreckage of a dying world they would build a new world, a free one, a glorious one. A world free of the chains of the past, a world where there would be such a thing as hope.

A world where Asch's betrayal and defiance would be laudable instead of laughable. A world where not only would it be possible to fight fate, but there would be no such thing as fate, only the paths each person chose for themselves.

Where humanity would be free to live, and love, as they chose. Where no one would have the power to control another's mind, rule another's heart. Where they and their replica children could live as free men, not puppets.

It was his duty as a commander to tell them what they must already know, to tell them that their hopes and dreams were finally within their grasps, but all he wanted to do was throw his head back and laugh like a child. Except he'd never laughed with joy as a child. No, by the time he'd been free of Hod, the fonologists and his parents, he was still living in the shadow of Hod, with the weight of that guilt and knowledge. Mystearica, Gailardia, they'd brought him some happiness, but he'd always known that when they discovered the truth of what he'd done, when they found out what he really was, they would despise him.

And rightly so.

He felt so old, even though he'd had to grow this beard to be taken seriously, becoming Commandant at such a young age. He was still only twenty-six. Only a little over a quarter of a century living, if one could call it that, on Auldrant, and soon?

Soon this impure world would be clensed, everything made anew. Soon enough Mystearica and Gailardia would wake on Eldrant, on Hod, his lord's lands restored to him. He did have to thank Lorelei for procuring their replica data for him, otherwise he didn't know how he would have managed it. Mystearica had been watched too closely in Yulia City, their precious heir, and she only left it once she no longer trusted him. As for Gailardia, he would have wanted an explanation, even if he'd been able to get away from the Fabre household, and he'd feared that his lord knew enough about fontech to catch him in a lie. He would have had to find some way to capture them alive and bring them here, and that came with its own risks.

Soon, the Big Bang effect would draw them into their new bodies, ensuring that they wouldn't be killed by hyperresonance, as Eldrant devoured Auldrant, and that they'd be trapped within their new bodies for a few days, unable to do anything to free Lorelei or stop his plans.

It was a pity that Asch couldn't be saved, that he'd lose him, just like he'd lost Ion, but he was used to the fact that this world was a cruel place.

The new one wouldn't be.

He would make sure of that.


	13. Away

Practically everyone was Scored to make the pilgrimage to Daath at least once in their lives. To read the memorial stones, to ask a question of the Fon Master, to have their purses soaked dry to fill the Order's coffers.

Before Fon Master Ion got sick, he'd had to read the Score practically every day in front of huge audiences, and of course when he touched one of the Score's fonstones, the first thing he noticed was the only thing he really cared about:

His own death.

He'd known it was coming: that was why he'd had the replicas made. He'd seen himself die too many times to really believe that he'd survive, so even though they were his replacements and that meant he'd live on in some form despite dying and spite the Score, he'd still hated them. He'd hated everything.

Except maybe Arietta. Sync didn't know what was so special about Arietta, even if she did make him feel funny sometimes, especially when she forgot to wear clothes. She liked wearing clothes, layers and layers of elaborate ones, because it was like having proper fur, but sometimes she forgot, especially if it was supposed to be just her and the Ion she thought was the original Ion. Maybe it was just that Arietta was weird, so Arietta was different from everyone else, like the officials Ion had slaughtered when they tried to put a stop to his plots or the replica he'd killed.

The second of Sync's brothers to die: one of them had just fallen apart before that. Lucky…

Sync would have been annoyed that Van saved him if it weren't for the fact he got to see this.

Daath.

Empty.

These streets were always crowded during the day. They only thinned out at night, and even then there were always tourists out and about. Steal? In the Order's city? From the people who were there so that the _Order _could rob them? Damage the Order's prestige like that? You'd have to be insane.

Daath was a warren, a pen, a…

The streets like the one he stalked down now were never empty, but right now he couldn't see another living soul.

It wasn't until after Van had claimed Sync that Sync had been alone for the first time. Before that, he'd been kept in a pen with the others most of the time, and there were the fonologists and their tests. Mohs and other officials looking them over like rappigs at market.

It was because of Van that he'd gotten quarters of his own and a title of his own. A _name _of his own. In this world, replicas were only things to be used, but Van had given him a use so he wasn't killed. At first he hadn't been that impressed, because he wouldn't have minded being killed. It would have meant an end to being treated like a thing. But being a god-general meant _he _got to give orders. He got to treat originals like things. It was worse for replicas, but the order treated everyone like things.

This world needed to be destroyed, but Van really might build a world where replicas weren't things.

And, in the meantime, he'd helped Sync become strong. Because of him, Sync got to kill people, like his original.

Because he was alive, he got to see things like this.

The streets of Daath were empty. They'd never been empty before: there were _always _people wandering around. The city wasn't deserted: from his vantage point on the roof he could see people barricaded in one of the inns. All the doors and windows at ground level were barricaded but they'd forgotten one of the skylights, or just not been able to reach it.

They could stuff cloth under the doors all they liked: it wouldn't save them from the miasma.

Or whatever was responsible for the other half of the corpses in the streets.

He'd been sent to Belkend on Van's orders, told to enter the city immediately after the time Lorelei was scheduled to drain its inhabitants of replica data and report. At first they hadn't noticed anything, although some of the dock workers had stopped work within ten minutes because they were getting tired faster than they should have. They'd been taking virus bottles, hoping they hadn't caught something from some boat. An hour later originals were dropping like flies, literally. Just falling down dead in the streets. At first other people had gotten excited over them, tried to summon seventh fonists, but the fuss had just killed the others faster. They hadn't known what to do when healing artes and gels hadn't worked.

Sync hadn't seen anyone die of miasma poisoning, but it made sense that was what had killed the ones without a mark on them. He laughed to himself as he turned over one of the bodies, verifying that there weren't any wounds. This one was wearing an order of Lorelei uniform, and not just that. They were a melodist, and that meant a seventh fonist. Seventh fonists and replicas were supposed to be more resistant to miasma poisoning (that was why he'd been sent out), so if they were dying from it, if Daath was already a ghost town, everywhere else must be worse.

This world was almost dead.

How ironic that Mohs was helping it along.

Van would have mentioned it if Daath was scored to be destroyed now. Had Mohs decided that everyone that got sick and died now was doing it in defiance of the score?

"He must have finally cracked," Sync said to himself, grinning.

They weren't just barricading themselves in to escape the miasma. Oracle knights had been guarding the city gates until they, too, succumbed, because after Belkend, Yulia City & Chesedonia had been struck, Mohs had ordered Daath's inhabitants to stay. The Score said that they would be safe, after all, even if Malkuth and Kimlasca both were supposed to die of a 'plague.'

Mohs really wanted to believe in the Score. That it was for the best, even after everything.

No one was trying to break out of the city, not anymore, but half of these bodies, oracle knights among them, had been killed by weapons or artes. A lot of the wounds were irregular: probably civilians with makeshift weapons trying to defend themselves.

The doors of several of the shops had been broken down: mobs? Riots?

In the Order's city, where order had always been kept?

He might not be able to understand all the stuff about the sephiroth and how the planet was breaking down because Van had stolen Lorelei and was using too many fonons and Akzeriuth had fallen and stuff, but this just proved that everything had broken down. That life as Auldrant had known it, the life Sync had watched it live and _hated_, was over.

There were _flames _in the distance, that was the only explanation for those lights. The sky was dark enough because of the miasma that the smoke didn't make any difference, but he could smell it. Maybe someone had gone nuts and was hoping that burning the air could purify the miasma or something? Maybe Mohs had started executing heretics by burning them at the stake, the way he'd talked about a few times, talking about 'the good old days' when the fon master wasn't rebellious and the world wasn't ending? Not that Mohs had been willing to admit _that. _

If he ever did come out of denial, Sync wanted to be there for it.

Nah, he'd probably crack rather than face facts. Maybe he already had cracked. The gate guards and stuff were just a little more of Moh's normal insane devotion to the Score, but those lights…

Dropping the body he'd been examining carelessly, Sync's eyes widened behind his mask. He should have figured it out before, except it was hard to believe. Those fires weren't just burning in or around the cathedral, were they?

Had a mob overrun it, had Mohs been slaughtered?

Sync jumped back up to the rooftops and took off in a run, because if that was true and he didn't verify it and report back _quick _Van would be really disappointed in him. Had someone other than them overrun the Order? Had someone rallied a mob and maybe even killed Mohs? It couldn't have been an internal coup: every potential dissident in the order was either in Van's faction or 'the Fon Master's,' or the original Fon Master's, anyway. There was that guy, the one that was always trying to make compromises and get everyone to be sensible, but even if Mohs lost it spectacularily enough that authority fell to him, there was no way he'd like the cathedral on fire.

It was actually on fire.

Sync's eyes were bright behind his mask, and if he'd known his emotions well enough he would have thought this was probably the best day of his life.

The cathedral he'd been penned in, built with tithes gouged from the spineless who wanted their Scored read and their futures planned out for them, was burning. There was fighting going on now: he could hear the shouting through the miasma's fog, hear the sounds of blows.

Man, Sync thought, Van was going to be sorry he missed this. Who wasn't going to be?

He _had _to find whoever was responsible, find them and extract their replica data. Someone who would do something like this?

When he reached a good vantage point overlooking the square, he dropped to a crouch, peering down into the gloom and trying to work out what was going on, who was on what side, who he should kill.

There was no one outside: all the noise was coming from inside the cathedral. A lot of oracle knights, officials & civilians. Yeah, had to be a mob. Sync jumped down, careful to avoid landing on a body not because of sentimentality but because they might shift under him as he landed and make him fall.

He'd seen enough battlefields to notice that the oracle knights had been fighting with their backs to the cathedral, and the civilians had all been heading towards the cathedral. A lot of them had been hit in the back, it looked like. Had Arietta sent her pets to attack Daath looking for the replica Ion or something? One of the women looked like she'd gotten clawed.

Well, that'd explain the roaring. Sync frowned a little, suddenly back to his usual disgust. It would be _boring _if it was just Arietta, but what had he expected? Had he really thought that a bunch of sheep would attack the Order, seriously? When they were originals and didn't know anything, weren't like Van's people?

Still, maybe it was hope that made him sneak in cautiously even though Arietta's pets wouldn't attack him. Arietta didn't like fire, hresvelgr feathers were flammable and it made a big stink, so she wouldn't have set fire to stuff? Probably the fonists had just set stuff on fire by accident themselves, and been too busy getting eaten to put it out. Yeah, the bodies here were more chewed on. He kicked a few more over to be sure, pouting, entirely unmoved by the sight of a face without a jaw or the blood soaked into the marble.

He should probably tell Arietta that Eldrant was going up soon, so she didn't get shot down by accident or something-"Urk."

He wondered if this was how that replica had died. If he'd been run through by this very same staff, just like this.

Sync forced himself to turn around and saw a ghost. If he'd turned a little further, if his eyes had been able to focus just a little longer, he might have seen Mohs' body spread out on top of the fonstone like a ritual sacrifice.

If he had, he might have smiled as he died.


	14. Back

Asch had always hated it when the replica apologized. So, of course, as soon as the dr-Luke was done putting his mind together, Luke just _had_ to apologize for dropping him in the miasma and bringing him back wrong.

Before, Asch would have said something about how dare he apologize, and called him a stupid dreck for making mistakes like that, because he'd felt that how his replica performed reflected badly on him. He hadn't been able to just admit to himself that his replica was a kid because that would have been saying that he was a kid, even though he was himself, not the replica. They were two separate people, he knew that now. It was strange that it had taken him so long to realize something that should have been so obvious, he thought as he rubbed his head, tuning out Luke's words.

Still, if Luke's fonons had come from inside him and Luke was a sentience, then had Luke been part of him, or Asch part of the sentience, before they were separated? He had felt like part of him had been ripped away: maybe it wasn't just his home and his family. He'd lost his previous life and perhaps part of his very soul.

He hadn't been amused when Jade had commented that Asch was just as much a replica as Luke was, but maybe the reason he'd let it get to him was that there was some truth to it. "I'm fine, stop apologizing already." He'd let it go on long enough, even though Luke needed to at least be given the chance to say he was sorry to feel like he'd actually been forgiven. They were still connected, and Luke's guilt was giving him a headache, even if it was a lot less bad than what his anger had done to Luke, or the echo of Lorelei's suffering.

He eyed Dr. Shu with habitual irritation before deciding that he should let the man do the tests even if Asch hated labs and fonon-reading equipment. For all he knew, Luke had screwed up again. It wasn't like he had a clue what he was doing. "At least you don't have the wings…"

As soon as he said that, Luke's wings flared again. "Why won't everyone stop doing that? I need to not think about it!" And talking about his progress reminded him.

"I thought you'd be a lot worse about it," Asch said as Dr. Shu did something with an arm cuff. "After what happened."

"Well, I think part of it was that I didn't know what I was feeling. All I knew that there was _something _dangerous about it. Now that I know what it is, I know what I should worry about instead of being afraid of everything." That and, well… The air wasn't safe anymore. Inside Yulia City, yes, but the miasma was everywhere. Falling wouldn't really make any difference.

He kept telling himself that.

"What did I miss?" Asch asked Luke.

"Jade finally got the hyperresonance detectors set up. There's a constant one where Hod used to be: I think that's Van's base now. If it's where I was before, I could teleport there. I can use Dist as a target." And then as target practice. How could he? It was one thing finding out that he'd been created as a replica, to be sacrificed so Asch could live, but Dist doing that to some poor other replica that hadn't had a name at all, not even someone else's like Luke and Ion had?

"Lorelei would know what you're capable of," Asch reminded him. He'd know more than Luke would. "Maybe he'll overestimate you."

"I doubt it," Luke said, looking down at his feet, hovering only a few inches above the ground. He'd put shoes on, even though he felt safer when his toes weren't touching anything, even sock. "Or I doubt it will make any difference."

"What are you talking about now?"

"It's like Akzeriuth. I wanted to save those people," Luke said in a small voice, the words coming out in a rush. "But I couldn't."

"Of course not. You didn't have a chance. The Score and Van made sure of that."

"So do I have a chance now? Awhile ago, Van said that the Score is Lorelei." In Belkend, when he'd been happy to see Asch but utterly uninterested in Luke. "Everyone's dying. The miasma is in the air, the seas are poisoned and the ground will start dissolving before much longer. It's not possible to stop it from getting worse unless we stop Eldrant, and Jade doesn't think it will get any better. There's no way to get rid of the miasma. I tried to get rid of the miasma at Akzeriuth, and there was just so much of it." Such a vast weight. "So it will keep poisoning people." And plants, and animals. "Auldrant is dying." Lorelei was dying. "How do you save someone who doesn't want to live?"

"I don't know what to tell you." Asch flopped back and considered Dr. Shu. He'd worked in Belkend's labs: he must have known some of what was going on: he had working ears, hadn't he? Even if he had kept to himself most of the time. Still, Asch didn't want him reporting to Jade. "_The reason I left Van was because I hated replicas. Aside from that? He's right about most of it. Yulia was sure it was the only way to stop the Score, and she'd know, right? The Score has to go." _Asch didn't want Natalia to die, but Asch's life had taught him not to care for people, because they didn't care for him. Van had taught him that. "_Saving who you can is better than nothing."_

"_So I'm supposed to just… give up?" _Condemn everyone else to death, not even try to save anyone but however many he could transform? "_Let Akzeriuth repeat itself? Or Hod repeat itself. Or the Fonic War." _The miasma had spread then, hadn't it? And they'd created a new land, the outer lands. What had happened to the people who hadn't followed Yulia's vision? What had happened to the people who didn't _want _every aspect of their lives, and their children's lives, decided for them?

Luke was pretty sure he knew.

"_It's pointless to fight a battle you can't win. Although the Order had to do that sometimes, when the Score said it would. Van had to send Legretta's brother to die." _Knowing the Score. "_Otherwise, my predecessor would have been sent to kill him, and then kill Van, for disobedience._" Defying the Score by living when he was supposed to be dead. "_Well, torture Van, since he obviously wasn't Scored to die back then_."

"…_Torture Ma-Van?" _Luke cut off the familiar Master Van.

Asch snorted. "What did you think Special Operations was for?" Asch had done things that Mohs had told him he should be proud of. "I've received a commendation for having a woman raped by some volunteers from my troops, since the Score said she would be." That was what the Order was like. That was what this world was like. "You're too naïve." Well, what did Asch expect? Even normal people weren't shown the Order's true face. "Didn't you notice that Malkuth didn't dare do anything about the fact we slaughtered everyone on the Tartarus? Nobody goes to war with the Order, no one dares. The divisions are murderers, plain and simple." Half the time they wouldn't even try to survive. And you had nightmares after killing a single soldier?" Ha. "If I was like you, I wouldn't get any sleep."

And now Luke felt sorry for him? "How did you think I got the name Asch the Bloody?_ I_ didn't." Of course Luke wouldn't have figured that out. "I killed and replaced the person who was Scored to become the Special Operations god-general, just like Sync did. They were grand maestro faction. There's no way the Order wouldn't have noticed two people becoming Maestros when it wasn't Scored. They look up who's going to be promoted every year: they don't need to spy on us, that's what the Score's for." Didn't need to make sure that their troops were loyal. "Or so they thought." Van had been able to do all of this right under their noses because he knew what the Score covered, what they would look at.

There was a quick knock at the door: Luke turned, recognizing Guy's, when the door was pushed open. "It's Jade, he just…" Well, it was obviously Jade that Guy was pulling along, half-carrying, half-dragging. Or it had been Jade, at least. Dr. Shu could see that he wasn't breathing: Luke and Asch just knew. "I'm not feeling all that good myself."

"You're not the only one." Tear coughed, but it was a small, half-hearted sound, as though she was coughing more to test if it was really that kind of sickness than because she couldn't help it.

"Is it another attack?" Dr. Shu asked. Another mass extraction? If he hadn't been out of Belkend visiting a patient in one of the satellite farms who was too sick to be moved, he'd be dead now.

Yulia City was the last refuge from the miasma, it only made sense for Van to wait for them to come here and then target it, but they'd hoped he couldn't do it anymore!

"No. Guy, Tear: Did you ever have your replica data extracted?" Luke asked, not realizing that it was a rhetorical question. Obviously they had, at some point.

"Not that I remember," Tear said.

Asch rolled his eyes. Of _course _he would have drugged her or found some way to make the separation painless for his little sister.

"Maybe. He showed me a lot of fontech for my sixteenth birthday." In hindsight, Guy was pretty sure what the machine had been, but he'd been hoping he was wrong. It hadn't looked very much like the one in Choral Castle, but they'd needed to transport it to Baticul.

Luke looked at his hands: they were clenched into fists, white-knuckled. "I waited too long." To change them, to make sure they could live in the new world. "Master Van would want you to live." So three replicas were dying. "Why Jade?"

"Dist, of course." He would have demanded it, Asch knew. "And for the sake of justice." Causing Jade to experience what those who had suffered because of fomicry had felt. "The less seventh fonon, the less long they last, right?"

Luke nodded. Jade had absolutely none, so his original body must have died the instant the big bang was set off.

"So I have some time," Tear knew. She'd see what she could do once she was in her brother's base. She wouldn't give up.

"I should change Peony." That vision of Jade's past had shown Luke that much. "And see if I can change Nephry without her figuring out what I'm doing." She wouldn't want anything to do with something similar to fomicry, even if it was just a transformation. "Then… We need to either fight Van or, or something. But we'd better do it soon." Before the world came too much closer to death. Before they were hit with any more surprises.

Dr. Shu had taken Jade's body from Guy and laid it down on another examination table, before going to a cupboard to pull out yet another white sheet. They were running out again. This one had been bleached sloppily: he could make out the remnants of a floral pattern, when he looked. It had been someone's bedsheet, or possibly tablecloth.

Now it was a shroud for the Necromancer, whose body was dead while the man himself would live on, coming back from the dead in another's living body. Every replica researcher knew how Jade had gotten his name, why he'd scavenged bodies during the Hod War. Why his troops had sometimes had familiar faces.

A non-seventh fonon resurrection arte, that wasn't time-dependant but could be cast long after the wound had set in. Such a noble endeavor.

Dr. Shu had joined the labs in order to save lives, and because of that he'd contributed to all this himself.

If the world died, no one could say it hadn't earned it.


	15. Friend

_I'm not very happy with this chapter: it felt like I was trying too hard, but, on the other hand, that's what I was trying to convey, that Luke is trying but even though he's Lorelei's replica he's not Lorelei, so how is he supposed to handle what Lorelei couldn't? The Score really was the 'best future,' if only in the sense of _least bad._ If it seems fragmented, confused, not making sense, that's really the POV I'm working with. _

_Auldrant is a bit like Wonderland, isn't it? Which would make Tear the White Rabbit…_ _They're all mad there, after all._

_Ah yes, in case anyone's wondered, this isn't an _All For The Want _chapter spun out to novella-length. Although there certainly is a certain resemblance..._

* * *

Even though Luke had said that, without Jade and Belkend's researchers, the only people who knew enough to have any chance of stopping the miasma and saving the world were all on the other side. Even if he used hyperresonance to go there and kidnap some, Van's followers were loyal. He and Asch hadn't known what they were getting into, and even though Asch had said the reason was replicas Luke would bet that the real reason was that he felt like Van had betrayed him by not telling him.

If Van had told him about Akzeriuth, said that he was counting him, told him everything about the fate of this world and that they needed a new one… Luke would like to think that he would have refused, that he would have insisted on finding another way. He just wasn't sure.

He could tell Guy and Tear felt the same way.

Luke had thought that Asch would be the one to refuse. Despite everything, Luke didn't think that he could ever bring himself to hate Van, but Asch had that core of obstinate, stubborn rage. He should have dug in his heels and fought this no matter how pointless it was. Just like it had been pointless to blame Luke for everything.

It figured that when Asch being Asch would have come in handy, that was when Asch the Bloody demonstrated that he could be cold-blooded as well as hot.

Maybe Luke had fixed his mind a little too much, repairing the damage from the miasma? It was a little hard to tell. The miasma itself was caged wrath, long denied a target. It and Asch fit together too well. Was that what Lorelei had meant, saying Asch was what was left behind when he was born?

Auldrant. Tear had said that the name meant 'singing world,' after reading through Yulia's journals. That it meant the same thing Lorelei's name did. If he tried to bring Asch into Eldrant, would he really poison it? Poison him?

But he didn't want to. He didn't want to give anyone up.

He'd already done too much, he'd already lost so much, or never had it, and he didn't _want _to accept reality. Maybe it was childish of him, maybe Lorelei was older and wiser and knew what was best for him, but he didn't want any of it.

He was supposed to be hope, wasn't he? So if he gave up hope, if he stopped fighting, wouldn't it all be for nothing anyway?

Since Van abandoned him in Akzeriuth to die – he would have died if Tear hadn't sung that hymn and saved him, and that night he had wished she hadn't – he'd been adrift, trying to find a way to be. Someone to prove himself to, since he couldn't strive to be worthy of Van anymore.

It felt like he'd finally found a solid footing, like he finally knew what he had to do, he finally had a way forward that wasn't fumbling in the dark, seeking redemption even though he knew very well that it was impossible.

"It's begun," Luke said, and read the truth of it in his fonon, in _himself_, sure as any fonstone. "Eldrant has been born."

Tear was leaning against a wall, fighting to stay awake. Guy had lost the battle and was already dead to the world, using Anise's shoulder as a pillow. He could feel their essences, their souls, the fonons that held their memories and their selves being drawn towards their new bodies. Being drawn into him.

Becoming part of Eldrant.

He followed.

Was this what it was like for Lorelei all the time? To be so _aware_?

Luke had always been locked out of the loop. He hadn't considered blaming anyone for not telling him he was a replica because that was how it had worked since he was born. The world was a place of arcane mysteries that everyone understood but him, and they weren't going to explain them. He should already know, like they did.

He could feel everything. Everyone. He finally understood them.

There was a body tucked in what had been Guy's bed, in Guy's bedroom. The data had been taken a few years ago: the body was younger than Luke's, the mind only a few days old, still without a name or even the concept of a name. Van hadn't programmed Guy's new body as one of the replica soldiers. Or Tear's, lying bonelessly in a patch of selenias and watching them grow with a soft fascination, channeling that healing power with instincts that Luke now knew weren't human. A human would have had to study artes like that, a replica would have had to be programmed: she hadn't been.

Like Asch, the ashes of the sacred flame, still possessed an echo of the power of hyperresonance, Lorelei's power, so had Tear and Van, all along. It wasn't the power of Yulia, it was the power of Lorelei.

No wonder Lorelei was helping Van. Van was Lorelei's _grandson_. Or so-many-greats-grandson, but still foretold in the Score. Still the one he, and Yulia, had been waiting for.

Not enough power to break the Score, but enough power to tip the balance. Van and Tear. And Asch, who was trying to reach him. Luke was aware of his annoyed mental kicks at the door between their minds, wanting to know what Luke had done _this _time, but there was so much else.

The replica soldiers patrolling the halls. Dist hugging a blank-eyed 'Jade' to him, while inside that body the original Jade fought to wake up, even knowing that he'd already shattered the replica's developing mind. He'd already destroyed so many that he had no right to balk at one more death, after all.

Luke had to reach back in time to do it, but he managed to salvage that replica's mind, making him his own body with the same flicker of will that drew Guy and Tear to new anchors. A moment later he felt Jade's mind flicker into focus, analyzing the current situation and inwardly cursing that his spear was still in his old body.

Jade was going to kill Dist and the woman that made the occasional, "Mm-hmm," sound in acknowledgement of Dist's happy babble as she adjusted the fonic glyphs.

Dist had made replicas of the other god-generals? Arietta had woken up there and brought them here – the past was already starting to blur into the present. Luke hoped he wouldn't start living in the future as well, like Lorelei. Legretta had fallen asleep like Guy, and her old body was laid out on a couch in the room where Van worked.

Luke doubted that she'd stop loving Van the instant she was free of the Score. It wasn't that easy.

No, all of that was distracting him. He needed to focus on the dangerous ones. Largo's original body was still alive, and Sync…

"…Ion?" Ion? "How could you?" Luke asked, and knew.

Ion just smiled, summoned by Luke's wish. "That was the first time anyone ever did something just for me." They'd either ignored his wishes because he was a replica, or seen him as useful because he was the fon master. "I know you still have nightmares about that soldier and Akzeriuth." And all the others. "This way, you won't have to kill anymore."

"You did it for me." So it was still Luke's responsibility. He hadn't saved Ion, and the miasma had used him. No. Ion had used it. "Everyone?"

"Well, I haven't found a way through the glyphs protecting Yulia City yet. I tried destroying them with Daathic fonic artes, but the building material they used is really strong."

"If you killed them to save me, so I wouldn't die in order to spare them, then why did you kill Sync?"

"He attacked you." And made Guy attack Luke. That had caused Luke even more pain. "Don't worry, we're even now."

The truly terrifying thing was that Luke understood. He really did. He understood how Gelda could use Jade like that, he understood why Dist loved Jade _because _Jade was casually cruel to him, he even understood how people could kill other human beings and not feel anything. He knew why they felt that way because he'd lived it. Those were his memories now, his memory particles. Parts of him.

He even knew why Ion wasn't killing Van. The same reason Ion hadn't revealed what Van was really like before Akzeriuth fell. Because Van had made Luke happy, and Ion was still a programmed replica, barely able to know what his feelings were. Ion could feel that he wanted Luke to live and be happy. He couldn't feel that it was wrong to help destroy an entire world in order to bring that about, not yet. Maybe never.

This entire island, seed of a new world, was as much his body as this copy of Asch's. Everything except the power of the miasma within Ion, Lorelei and Van was either already a replica or in the process of becoming one.

No. Even Van.

"It's selfish of me," Lorelei told the young man (so very young, to have suffered so much), ignoring the fact Van had tried to run him through before he lost the strength. The Key of Lorelei had fallen to the side when Van collapsed to one knee, falling against Lorelei's legs, leaning against them even before Lorelei moved to hold Van's head in his lap. "I know you didn't want this. I resisted the temptation to ask Luke to make you his, but I want you to live. I know you don't want this life, that you'll throw it away, but I want you to live. Just a little longer." Even if he spent it asleep until he finally took over the new body Legretta had programmed the machines to make him with the data Lorelei had given her.

Pale-yet-golden hands stroked that ash-brown hair, so like Yulia's. "You'll take good care of him, won't you?" Lorelei said, even though Luke wasn't there to see it. He knew that the walls would remember his words, and Luke would remember when he came. "The one who would seize glory worked so hard for you, endured so much. Yet he doesn't think that he deserves that glory."

"Damn you," Van growled, trying to grip the key with hands that had lost all their strength.

"Your wish has already been granted." By two thousand years of hell. "Earlier, you asked if the creation of Eldrant was hurting me. It is, but it's a clean pain." So much more bearable than unending agony. "I know it's too little too late, but at least let me do this," Lorelei said, and took the miasma in Van's fonons into himself, so it wouldn't contaminate his new body.

At the same time, even though there was really no time at all, Luke felt Asch grab on to him and use Lorelei's power- their power- Luke's power to pull himself and the others to where Luke was. He should be trying to think of what to do now but he could feel Lorelei's feelings through Van. They were so like his own. Helpless love for someone who hated/despised him, them, someone they couldn't have. Someone who wanted to kill, full of hatred, things they couldn't understand and yet _did_. Luke had hated the people who kept him in the manor sometimes, hated Natalia, even hated _Guy_. Hated every human being he knew, because all of them were his jailers.

Lorelei loved humanity, loved Yulia, and they had done this to him. He'd suffered and died for them, to make up for all those who had died in the war, the way Luke had wanted to suffer if that would make Akzeriuth right somehow.

Even worse was the realization that he was focusing on Lorelei's weight of tangled love and pain because that was better than focusing on Van, because even if Van was less ancient, and simpler, Van was the one he loved, who could affect him as Lorelei never could.

There was too much of it, of his fonon. Too much of _him_ to keep track of. Closing his eyes and covering his ears didn't help because all of it was already _in _him, and why hadn't this driven Lorelei mad? It was too much, he felt like he was shaking apart!

…the way Auldrant was shaking apart. The way Lorelei was. The way Lorelei had gone mad with grief.

Mad enough to kill his children.

Mad enough to kill Auldrant.

Mad enough to kill himself.

Lorelei was mad. Diseased. Auldrant was. Everything was tangled up together because it was one thing, and one thing alone.

Ion was right. The miasma had already consumed everything. There was nothing left… except him.

Would it eat him too?


	16. Through

_Eldrant means "The Glorious World" according to its intro screen. The el is probably the same el from Vandesdelca, the one who would seize Glory, and presumably the drant is the same as in Auldrant, meaning it also means "The Something World." "The Singing World" is my own invention, from one meaning of Lorelei's name, "The Murmuring Rock." _

_I really haven't been up to doing much writing recently, but at least I got some kind of an ending written for this before the slump hit. _

* * *

"You can't save him."

It took Luke a few seconds to realize that he was hearing those words with his physical body, the way he had heard Asch's demands that he say something and Anise's relief that Ion was back.

"It's him or you." So simple, so terribly simple. "I couldn't destroy mine without destroying my creation, destroying everything." The Key hovered behind its maker, the hilt almost like a crown, the aura of Lorelei's power like a halo. "But you can destroy mine without dying. Even now, the fon machines are purifying the miasma." In the process of killing Lorelei. Fon machines, replica machines that were themselves replicas. Parts of Eldrant, parts of Luke.

"Lorelei." Ion greeted him with a smile. His brothers had been thrown into the volcano. How could he not understand the anger of the abandoned, once he felt it? He'd been perfectly happy to lend them his knowledge, let them manifest with the assistance of a fon master, when that would help Luke.

Ion smiled and raised his staff, feeling power greater than any true fon master had ever possessed, and was genuinely happy to let it use him, like he'd let Mohs use him, and Van, and Jade in turn, for this was his wish as well.

The original world was a terrible place. Surely Luke's world would be much better.

"I know. I know how this will end, after all." He'd been living it for two thousand years, in the now the Score bound him to.

"If we can purify the miasma, then we can save you, save everyone!" Like Akzeriuth, Luke realized, and knew there was no way it would be that easy even as he pleaded. Luke had thought that he was there to purify the miasma, to save all those poor, sick people and their homes. So that all of them could have a happy ending.

Lorelei shook his head. "It is too late for that. I just… I must…" He didn't grimace, but he held his hand to his side. "One last thing." He sounded so tired. One last thing, and then he could rest.

Natalia gasped, the first to see it. Hidden by the drape of the robe, much of Lorelei's torso was missing. His right arm was still there, but hung uselessly.

"My body is being destroyed, after all," he said when he realized what she was looking at. "Hod was destroyed years ago, and Nezach a few months ago." He waved in the direction of the ground.

Maybe Legretta hadn't dressed Lorelei like a girl to embarrass him, Luke realized. The long robes that fell to the ground even when Lorelei hovered like this hid that _his feet were gone_. It made sense, didn't it? Lorelei was the avatar of Auldrant, "But that's Asch's body!"

Lorelei smiled wryly. "I was safe from this and the poison while I was in your body because it was your body." A new, pure world. Their hope. "This body is a part of Auldrant, after all." One more being condemned by the Score. "The sephiroth were anchored to the key points of the planet, of my body." The two gates of the Albertesque Seal to his feet. "I don't have a leg to stand on," he said, and laughed, just a single laugh before it became a cough. "Desi would have… liked that." So many lost, and even if he'd tried to have them reborn in places that would cause them to become part of the new world, they weren't the same people anymore. Not at all. "But there is… no more time." He turned to Ion. "Leave that body."

"No, they won't," Ion said calmly. "You'll have to destroy me with him."

"But… why?" It wasn't necessary at all, Ion was a replica.

"Because if you kill me, then your last act will be hurting Luke." Ion smiled when Luke protested, glad he wanted Ion to live, but that was just it. That was why he'd do anything for him, and that was why he didn't especially want to live anymore. He'd killed so many people for Luke, and killing, especially for his sake, would make Luke unhappy. Ion didn't want to have to see him feel guilty for what Ion had done, and he owed the Qliphoth for helping him. If Luke lived and was happy, that was enough.

"My last act… will already hurt him," Lorelei said, but bowed his head, knowing that it was useless to try to argue, not when he could barely think and the miasma wouldn't give him anything he wanted, even if he wanted it not for himself but his last child. Lorelei's eyes narrowed, suddenly green, glinting out of the gold that had covered them. "So be it," he said, and his power swept forward, grabbing Ion as he dived.

Ion, and Asch.

Some instinct made Luke curl in on himself, wings wrapping around him, because this was going to _hurt_…

He woke up on an examination table in the infirmary of Guy's family's castle, or at least its replica.

"Luke?" Guy asked, helping him sit up. "How do you feel?"

"How am I supposed to feel?" Luke wondered, blinking to clear his head. "I just felt myself die. Twice." Asch had been him once, and Lorelei… "He destroyed them both with hyperresonance." All three, well, four of them. Ion.

Ion had died twice now, and how was he supposed to bring someone back if they were destroyed with hyperresonance?

His hands were shaking. Worse than after that soldier, worse than after Akzeriuth. All dead, or almost all dead, and all for him. He'd tried to save everybody like a fool, like Akzeriuth, and he'd fought when he could have changed people, he could have saved Peony for Jade.

Jade was there, Luke could feel him even if he couldn't see him. Feel the lab coat he was wearing and the blood on it. He'd had to kill her, again, and it hadn't been an accident this time. Well, last time it wasn't an accident either, but even if she'd meant to die Jade hadn't meant to kill her. This time, she'd tried to kill him. She hadn't had any use for him anymore, if he was going to try to stop Van, stop Eldrant, stop humanity's only hope of survival.

Stop _him_.

It felt like shards of broken glass, stuck into Jade's body and healed over, even if he didn't show anything on the outside. Luke knew that feeling well.

What would happen when Master Van woke up? He would still want to die, Luke knew.

"I couldn't save anyone," Luke said, and felt someone's arms wrap around him. Tear's.

"Luke… You saved us, didn't you?" Tear reminded him, and he could feel that she was trying so hard.

Almost all of Auldrant was gone now, only a few of the souls in the farthest reaches of the fon belt were left. He wondered if he could try to save them, but somehow it all seemed so pointless. Saving a few people couldn't make up for failing to save Auldrant, just like no matter how many people he saved it wouldn't wash away the blood on his hands, the poor people of Akzeriuth.

"I'm sorry I was so useless, I…" He'd had all that power but he hadn't understood anything, he'd just gotten swept up in things and… no, he hadn't even played into Van's hands, he hadn't even done _that _right. Lorelei had told him to save people, and he hadn't listened. "I'm sorry…"

"Luke…" Guy started to say, started to reach out, but he couldn't touch Luke, not when Tear was there.

"It's ok," Tear said, feeling a tightness in her chest. "I didn't do any better." So she couldn't criticize him. "We all, we all failed. We all failed you. I knew that you didn't know anything about the outside world, I knew that you loved my brother so much, and I… Ion asked me to look after you." So she would, she'd promised.

"Why couldn't he tell me?" Luke wondered, and Jade winced before Luke corrected himself. "Lorelei. If he'd… Oh. The Score. And the miasma. He couldn't tell me, and I couldn't figure it out. I could have destroyed the miasma, I could have all along. I could have saved Akzeriuth… I can save Akzeriuth," Luke realized, and, for the first time in a long time, felt Hope.

And it was Glorious.

"I can save Akzeriuth. Lorelei couldn't it would have ruined everything. With the Albertesque Seal in place Eldrant couldn't have risen, he would have been too powerful and the _Score _would have been too powerful. I wouldn't have been able to fight him at all. He had to almost kill himself to give me a chance, and that let the miasma…" Eat him alive from the inside, more and more the more Eldrant, replicas, _Luke _grew. Creating Eldrant, giving it life, had exhausted a dying world. Torn Lorelei's body apart.

"All children come into the world screaming and covered in blood," Luke said, and wondered where that had come from. Or who. "But I'm not a child anymore." He could feel Jade about to comment. "Not totally. I need to think it through first." As much as he wanted to just dive back and do it now. "But I exist, here and now. My Score has been fulfilled, Eldrant exists. I'm as strong as, no, I'm stronger than Lorelei now. I can purify the miasma, and if I can keep him sealed until it's past his Score of death, the Score will be over. It only covers until he dies, so if he doesn't die?" Except he'd already died. "The Score's already been fulfilled," Luke realized. "I _won't _have to fight the Score. It's already been fulfilled." Auldrant had drowned in the miasma, been eaten alive. "I, I think I can do this. I can make up for Akzeriuth."

How did you make up for ten thousand deaths? By preventing them from happening.

He could stop Master Van. He'd have to prevent the war, too, and deal with Master Van somehow, and he wanted to bring his friends back the way they were now, so they'd remember everything, and see if he could save Asch and Ion along the way, and Lorelei so the Lorelei back then would be the one that had died and wasn't bound anymore…

It was a good thing he had Jade.

"I think I can do this," he said again, grinning. Springing to his feet and lifting Tear in the air and swinging her around and around, laughing like the child he was.

He could do this, he could do anything.

Oh, maybe he could even go back and prevent Hod? Save Natalia's mother so Largo wouldn't be so angry, save…

The sky was the limit.

* * *

_You could say this is like _All For the Want_ in that there's time travel to get another ending…_

_Lorelei's problem in that other fic is that the instant he goes back, he's bound by the Score again and doesn't even get to remember what happened. Not to mention there's the miasma. _

_Without Luke, it's Game Over. In the _All For the Want_ universes, Luke gets taken out of the equation one way or another (death, never being born, controlled, following Master Van), and without him there is literally no hope. He's the Scion of Lorelei, the one piece of Lorelei's power free of the Score. _

_And they were trying to drive him to suicide, literally in the case of Kimalasca's government when he and Natalia are captured… _

_So, in this scenario, we end up with something like the Luke of _Tales of Payback, _except not severely misanthropic. _ToP _Luke is wondering why he's saving these people, this Luke is going, "Oooh, oooh, I can save them, and them…" Well, Jade will make him be somewhat realistic. _

_This is one of those 'I'm stopping it here since I bet you can figure out how it goes from this point,' fics. The only real problem would be if Van can be saved or not, and I've written enough of people thinking depressing things into this fic. Worst case scenario, he reincarnates and gets a second childhood with a couple literal godfathers looking after him, ok?_


End file.
